Mandarin links UK's woes to Tony Blair era

Published on Friday 17 September 2010 22:49

A FORMER civil service chief has revealed that Whitehall knew ministers were borrowing too much money as far back as five years ago, but were too scared to put the brakes on spending for fear of ruining Labour's reputation.

In a candid insight into the culture of the previous government, Lord Turnbull, former head of the Civil Service, said Whitehall "should have" told ministers that spending was running too high.

He said in 2005, after Tony Blair had won a third term, borrowing had already become excessive but was allowed to continue because of "wishful thinking" in the Treasury that growth would carry on forever.

He said: "It kind of crept up on us in 2005, 2006, 2007, and we were still expanding public spending at 4.5 per cent a year."

Admitting the Treasury should have been putting more money aside, he added: "You might have thought that we should have been giving priority to getting borrowing under better control, putting money aside in the good years - and it didn't happen."

He claimed "the politics" of the time had prevented civil servants from speaking more openly about the increasing level of debt.

"The politics was that we had put an end to boom and bust."

He said the main reason that Britain is now "in the mess we're in" was because "public spending got too big relative to the productive resources of the economy".