A bad day at the office

I tuned into Sky for a live broadcast from Westminster where Mervyn King was speaking before the Treasury Select Committee. The Governor of the Bank of England said: "The scale of the public deficit is extraordinary at 12.5% of GDP which is a reflection of the scale of the global downturn but also that when we came into the recession, we were on a fiscal policy path that wasn't sustainable." He continued that Alastair Darling's plans to cut the national debt were not ambitious enough. Indeed, OECD figures released today showed that the UK economy is in "sharp recession" and will shrink by its fastest pace of decline since World War II. Moreover, the UK fiscal deficit is expected to rise to 14% of economic output in 2010, compared with an average of 8.75% across the group's 30 members.

Earlier in the day at Prime Minister's Question Time, David Cameron took Gordon Brown to task over his claims that capital expenditure will continue to rise until 2012. This claim is completely contradicted by figures contained in the 2009 Budget. The Government needs to be open and transparent about the true scale of the economic mire we face and how its own spending plans will be affected.

In the words of George Osborne: "This is the demolition day for Gordon Brown's tax and spending policies."

David Jones MP covers Brown's "really bad day", here.