Economic Forecasts

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

As a new Treasury Minister, I am very aware that I should not comment on currency movements, but we are very lucky in this country to have the independent Bank of England. It has an inflation target; we do not target the exchange rate. The performance of the economy has been stronger since Brexit than any of us feared with, for example, good household consumption figures recently.

[Lord Tomlinson (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree with the Governor of the Bank of England, whom she has just praised, in his analysis but two days ago, when he said that the high levels of consumption in this country are kept up by unsustainable levels of household debt—that we are living now and will have to pay for it in the future?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I always listen with great care to what the governor says. Of course, unsecured debt as a share of household income is in fact lower than it was before the financial crisis. It is true that the savings ratio has come down more recently to 5.6%. That often happens in a recovery. I go back to the point that I made at the start: UK GDP growth has been strong relative to other leading OECD nations, and the unemployment rate is extremely low in this country, which is very good for working people across the UK.