Rishi Sunak insists debt is ‘on schedule’ to fall – despite mocking of minister Laura Trott who made same claim
Rishi Sunak has insisted national debt is “on schedule” to fall – despite one of his ministers coming under fire for making the same claim.
Laura Trott, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was accused of not knowing the “basic facts of her job” after she repeatedly claimed debt is falling as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP).
Her claims came despite the latest official projections which suggest there will be an increase in debt over the next five years.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said in November that debt is forecast to climb as a percentage of national income from 89% in 2023/24 to 92.8% in 2028/29.
Reducing debt is one of the five pledges Mr Sunak made to the public at the start of 2023, along with cutting NHS waiting lists and “stopping the boats”.
Ms Trott was presented with the OBR forecast during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme – and responded by saying she had “different figures”.
She said the prime minister’s central pledge was that “debt needs to be falling over the five-year fiscal forecast as a percentage of GDP, which it is”.
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When challenged, Ms Trott appeared to say quietly “I’m not sure” – to which presenter Evan Davis said: “This is really basic… I’m amazed that you don’t know that debt is rising.”
The minister replied: “I think I need to have the figures. I’ve got different figures which… I think we just need to… yeah.”
Treasury minister Laura Trott has been accused of not knowing the ‘basic facts’ of her job
Speaking to broadcasters on Friday, the prime minister appeared to defend Ms Trott.
Asked how the public could have confidence in the economy following the minister’s remarks, Mr Sunak said: “Debt is on schedule to fall as measured by the independent Office of Budget Responsibility, which they’ve affirmed at the last autumn statement that the chancellor gave.
“But our plan for the economy is working – inflation has come down from 11% to 4%. Mortgage rates are starting to come down, wages are rising and because economic conditions are now improving, we’ve been able to start cutting people’s taxes.”
‘It’s terrifying these people are in charge’
The OBR forecast Mr Davis cited says debt will start to fall in the latter half of this decade, but it will still be higher in five years than it is currently.
The projection is that debt will rise from 89% of GDP now to 93.2% in 2026/27. It will then decline in the final two years to 92.8% of GDP by 2028/29.
This was highlighted by a Downing Street spokesperson when contacted for comment. They said it meant the government was “on track to meet our commitment to have debt falling in five years’ time”.
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Mr Sunak’s description of debt as being “on schedule” to fall is different to the language he has used in the past, when he claimed it had already been reduced.
The claim earned him a rebuke from the statistics watchdog, which said he may have caused “confusion” and “undermined trust in the government’s use of statistics”.
To measure debt, the government tends to use public sector net debt (PSND) excluding the Bank of England (BoE).
Public sector net debt on its own is forecast to drop by around 4% as a share of GDP over the next five years, but underlying debt, excluding the state bank, is set to rise by around 4% in the same period.
PSND, excluding the BoE, is forecast to drop slightly at the end of the five-year projection – from 93.2% in 2027/28 to 92.8% – but that is still higher than the 89% it is currently.
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Labour said it was “terrifying” that people like Ms Trott were in charge of the country’s finances.
The party‘s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, said: “The Tories have crashed the economy and doubled the national debt over the last decade.
“This evening we discover that Laura Trott, Jeremy Hunt’s number two, doesn’t even know the basic facts of her job.
“It’s terrifying to think these people are not just in charge of the country’s finances, but still think they can lecture anyone else.”
Thousands more Afghan nationals may have been affected by another data breach, the government has said.
Up to 3,700 Afghans brought to the UK between January and March 2024 have potentially been impacted as names, passport details and information from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy has been compromised again, this time by a breach on a third party supplier used by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
This was not an attack directly on the government but a cyber security incident on a sub-contractor named Inflite – The Jet Centre – an MoD supplier that provides ground handling services for flights at London Stansted Airport.
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The flights were used to bring Afghans to the UK, travel to routine military exercises, and official engagements. It was also used to fly British troops and government officials.
Those involved were informed of it on Friday afternoon by the MoD, marking the second time information about Afghan nationals relocated to the UK has been compromised.
It is understood former Tory ministers are also affected by the hack.
Earlier this year, it emerged that almost 7,000 Afghan nationals would have to be relocated to the UK following a massive data breach by the British military that successive governments tried to keep secret with a super-injunction.
Defence Secretary John Healey offered a “sincere apology” for the first data breach in a statement to the House of Commons, saying he was “deeply concerned about the lack of transparency” around the data breach, adding: “No government wishes to withhold information from the British public, from parliamentarians or the press in this manner.”
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The previous Conservative government set up a secret scheme in 2023 to relocate Afghan nationals impacted by the data breach, but who were not eligible for an existing programme to relocate and help people who had worked for the British government in Afghanistan.
The mistake exposed personal details of close to 20,000 individuals, endangering them and their families, with as many as 100,000 people impacted in total.
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A government spokesperson said of Friday’s latest breach: “We were recently notified that a third party sub-contractor to a supplier experienced a cyber security incident involving unauthorised access to a small number of its emails that contained basic personal information.
“We take data security extremely seriously and are going above and beyond our legal duties in informing all potentially affected individuals. The incident has not posed any threat to individuals’ safety, nor compromised any government systems.”
In a statement, Inflite – The Jet Centre confirmed the “data security incident” involving “unauthorised access to a limited number of company emails”.
“We have reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office and have been actively working with the relevant UK cyber authorities, including the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre, to support our investigation and response,” it said.
“We believe the scope of the incident was limited to email accounts only, however, as a precautionary measure, we have contacted our key stakeholders whose data may have been affected during the period of January to March 2024.”
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