Member News
David Cameron has accused the prime minister of breaking his fiscal rules and leading the country "from boom to bust".
During exchanges at prime minister's questions in the Commons, the Conservative leader asked Gordon Brown to "finally admit he did not abolish boom and bust".
He accused Brown of breaking his own fiscal rules, which limit borrowing to 40 per cent of GDP and require the government to borrow only to invest over an economic cycle.
The rules had "allowed him to pile up huge borrowing", Cameron said.
"He said they were right for every stage of the economic cycle and guaranteed he would not break them. Will he accept they are now dead."
Brown said the cause of the financial crisis had started in the private banking sector, not with the government.
And he said the government had met its fiscal rules "in the last 10 years".
"If I may remind him, borrowing has been one per cent under the Labour government over these last 10 years, it was three per cent under the Conservative government.
"They broke the roof, we fixed it."
But Cameron said: "Why won't he admit that the rules failed to deliver responsibility in the good years and as soon as the bad times came they collapsed completely."
He went on: "He hasn't got a plan, he's just got an overdraft. Thousands of people are losing their homes and their jobs because this prime minister's irresponsible boom has now turned to bust."
Brown replied: "Thousands of people worried about their homes and jobs will want to know they have a government that is prepared to take the action that is necessary to deal with the problem.
"This Conservative government says borrowing is the wrong approach, I say it is right to take the action that is necessary to take us through these difficulties."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd