Autumn Forecast

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, forgive me, I should have pointed out that the details of the package are still subject to final negotiation. I guess that the lawyers have to trawl over the press release, as it were, and my right honourable friend’s statement that the loan is not the loan until it is absolutely bolted down in the formal documentation. The terms of the loan are still subject to final negotiation alongside the IMF and eurozone packages.

[Lord Naseby]

Is my noble friend aware that listening to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, reminds me of Cambridge in November—rather dour and foggy with not much light being shown on the country’s economic situation? Is it not a fact that, since the general election, the United Kingdom’s long-term interest rates have been falling every month and that prior to that period they were going up every month?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the changed direction of travel since the new Government came in. I do not want to wade into a Cambridge argument. As a mere Oxford man, I always found my economics professors rather more cheery in their outlook, but perhaps my memory is clouded.