The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury has blamed a “dire economic inheritance from the previous government” on a jump in Government borrowing last month. Official figures on Friday showed public sector debt hit 100% of gross domestic product in August for the first time since the early 1960s. James Murray said the latest Government borrowing figures were “far worse than expected”, having come in higher than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00We know that we have a dire economic inheritance from the previous government.
00:03The figures released this morning show that debt is now at 100% of GDP and the figures for this
00:09August are far worse than expected. It's in fact the worst August on record outside of the pandemic
00:14and what this really underscores for me is how important it is that we take the tough
00:18decisions necessary to fix the foundations of the economy, bring back economic stability
00:22and on that basis we can get the economy growing and make people across Britain better off.
00:26Those figures that we've seen this morning don't include recent decisions that have been taken,
00:30what they underscore is the inheritance that we've had from the previous government
00:34and I think everyone across Britain knows just how bad the inheritance was and obviously since
00:39we got into office we've had it confirmed that things are even worse than we thought
00:42with the 22 billion pound black hole, the in-year spending pressure that we're going to have to
00:46address in the budget. You know we know there are going to be difficult decisions around taxation,
00:51welfare and spending but we're determined to fix the foundation so that we can get the economy
00:55growing.