Thankfully, one need not rely on memory.
Now that we have had a chance to look at what has really been going on, I want to tell you the scale of the problem that we face.
...Today, our national debt stands at £770 billion. Within just five years it is set to nearly double to £1.4 trillion. To put it in perspective, that is some £22,000 for every man, woman and child in our country.
....Now, we knew this before. Soon,the independent Office for Budget Responsibility will set out independent forecasts that will show the scale of the problem we are in today. For the first time people will be able to see a really truly independent assessment of the nation’s finances and the size of the structural deficit.
This important innovation has been noticed around the world, and I believe will help restore confidence in our fiscal framework. But what I can tell you today – and what we did not know for sure before, in fact what we could not know, because the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer did not make the figures available – is how much the interest on our debt is likely to increase in the years to come.
David Cameron, June 2010