Finance (No. 2) Bill

It is a pleasure to welcome the hon. Lady to her new role, as she is one of the more economically literate and articulate of the shadow Front-Bench team. I am therefore surprised that she continues to bring out the hoary chestnut that somehow this deficit was entirely a result of the collapse in the banking system and was nothing to do with the previous Government's spending more than they raised in taxes since 2001.