Downing Street Says » You and Yours Interview

Asked whether the Prime Minister was feeling bruised after his interview, the PMS said that the Prime Minister felt it was very important that he was out there engaging with the public and explaining what the Government was doing. Of course, people were very concerned about what was happening in the economy and you would expect that to happen, but the Prime Minister certainly wouldn t shy away from engaging directly with the public.

Asked if the Prime Minister had hoped it would deal with more public services related issues, the PMS replied not particularly. Put that the message from listeners seemed to be that whatever the Government was doing, it wasn t working, the PMS said that the Prime Minister s view was that the Government did need to act and did need to continue to act. All countries were facing these problems; these were not issues that were unique to the UK.

Of course these were difficult times. We needed to sort the banks out and get them lending again and that s why we were taking the action that we were. However, that required the Government to act and intervene, which is what we were doing and not sitting back.

Put that the Prime Minister didn t apologise and seemed to suggest that it was the public that didn t understand what was going on, the PMS said that he didn t think the Prime Minister was making that point at all. The Prime Minister was making the point that if we were going to resolve and deal with the economic problems that we faced, we needed to understand the root causes and that was the fact that this was not a homegrown recession. It was very different from recessions we had seen in Britain previously, when inflation got out of control, the interest rates had to rise to very high levels and as a result, output in the economy fell.

We went into this downturn with inflation relatively low by historical standards, with interest rates low and with high levels of employment. We also had low levels of public debt compared to other countries. What we had seen was a short circuit in the global financial system, which had affected us and affected all countries. It was only if you started from that basis that you could begin to understand and then take action to deal with the problem.

Put that the Prime Minister had mentioned action for savers in the Budget and were there any more details on that, the PMS advised people to wait for the Budget. Put that he had also mentioned areas of state assets that the Government might need to sell off, the PMS said that that was correct but we would update people in the Budget.

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» Tuesday, March 10, 2009

You and Yours Interview

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