Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:13 pm on 28 June 2005.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Government Whip, Government Whip
3:13,
28 June 2005
My Lords, I agree with that assessment. We should understand that we are dealing with the net figure of two aggregates when looking at deficits. Those can be somewhat volatile, and then to take just one month's figures and to extrapolate from them can be wholly misleading. Look at this Government's record on forecasting: it has been better that the OECD, better than the IMF, and, as the European Central Bank analysis shows, between 1999 and 2003, our forecasting was the best of all the governments in G7.