After party political porky pies, Number 10 admits debt is rising

Finally: Number 10 admits that far from ‘dealing with debt’, the government is seeing it rise. This morning the Prime Minister’s spokesman was grilled on the party political broadcast that horrified Fraser last night in which the Prime Minister said ‘we are making progress. We’re paying down Britain’s debts.’

Fraser has explained the reality – that Cameron is in fact increasing Britain’s debt by 60 per cent – in this post with two unnerving graphs, and the Prime Minister’s spokesman conceded that ‘the debt as a percentage of GDP has risen’. Asked whether the Prime Minister understood the difference between the debt and the deficit, he said: ‘Yes, he does.’ By way of explanation for the broadcast, he added:

‘The point the Prime Minister was making is that it is the Prime Minister’s government that is taking the tough decisions to deal with the economic crisis the government inherited and we are making progress with that.