The debt adds up

Well done Brooks Newmark, who’s taking on Gordon Brown over his fiddled debt statistics.  The Tory MP, and member of the Treasury Select Committee, releases a report today which builds on Coffee House’s work by adding together some of the more recent off-balance sheet debts and liabilities that Brown has swept under the fiscal carpet.  The grand debt total?  Some £1,854 billion – around 127 percent of GDP, and over 3 times greater than the Govenrment’s 40 percent debt ceiling.  Here’s what’s included in that:

Of course, at these levels, national debt is set to be one of the biggest political concerns over the next few years – not just how to pay it back, but how it should be measured.  There’s an argument that pension liabilities shouldn’t be included on any official measure – few other countries do – but the general transparency of Newmark’s figure should be admired, and should more be the template for future administrations than Brown’s narrower debt definition.