FactCheck: Harman versus Hague

Last Modified: 09 Jul 2008
By: Channel 4 News

With Gordon Brown in Japan for the G8 summit, Harriet Harman, William Hague and Vince Cable deputise at the despatch box for the penultimate PMQs of the parliamentary session.

The claim

"When [Hague] was in the cabinet was unemployment higher or lower than it is now? Higher! Were interest rates higher or lower than they are now? Was debt higher or lower than now?"
Harriet Harman, prime minister's questions, 9 July 2008

The analysis

The former Tory boy joined the cabinet in July 1995 as Wales secretary, not exactly role noted for its direct hotline to the heart of the Treasury. Still, let's not let that detract from Harman's point - what were the economic figures when Hague held high office?

In the third quarter of1995, the unemployment rate stood at 8.6 per cent. A year later, it was 8.1 per cent; in the second quarter of 1997, when Labour came to power, it was down to 7.2 per cent. A downward trend, but still higher than the most recent quarterly figure, for the first three months of 2008, which put the unemployment rate at 5.2 per cent.

What about interest rates? When Hague joined the cabinet, the Bank of England base rate was 6.63 per cent. It then dropped pretty steadily, to reach 5.69 per cent in June 1996, and was 5.94 per cent went Labour swooped into Number 10.

Today, the rate is 5 per cent, a decrease from 5.75 per cent this time last year.

Debt it is now lower than in the endgame of the Tory administration - at least, it is if we're talking about the government's debt; personal debt is another beast entirely, swelling quietly until the credit crunch wake-up call.

In 1995-96, public sector net debt was 42.6 per cent of GDP; in 1996-97 it was 43.3 per cent.

Gordon Brown then gripped the Treasury reins with a prudent fist, keen to dispel ideas of Labour wreaking economic havoc by spending the country blithely into the red.

He set great store on fiscal rules restricting the amount the government could borrow, and used early budget surpluses to get debt down to 30.3 per cent in 2001-02. Since then, however, it squeezed up to a 36.7 per cent at the end of March 2008 - or 43.1 per cent, if Northern Rock were - perhaps unfairly - included on the balance sheet.

The sources

ONS: Labour market statistics
Bank of England: official bank rate history
Treasury public finances databank
IFS analysis of today's public finance figures, May 2008

The claim

"The last person he'd look to for dietary advice is someone who thinks a good diet is 18 pints a day."
Harriet Harman, PMQs, 9 July 2008

The analysis

Harman takes a pop at Hague for his admission of heavy teenaged drinking to GQ - the same magazine that recently got Nick Clegg to drop the PR clanger that he had slept with "no more than 30" women.

But just how many pints did the Yorkshireman reckon he'd put away in a day as a beer delivery worker? It was - famously - 14 rather than the 18 Harman suggests today. Either way, it's probably something Hague would rather live down than correct.

The sources

BBC: Hague - I drank 14 pints a day

The claim

"We're helping first-time buyers by reducing the stamp duty."
Harriet Harman, PMQs, 9 July 2008

The analysis

Well, some first time buyers. March's budget changed stamp duty rules so that shared-ownership buyers usually only paid the tax on 20 per cent of the property. This isn't exactly the kind of sweeping reduction - doubling the threshold at which the tax becomes payable - proposed by the Conservatives last year.

The claim

"The important thing for people is that unemployment remains high."
Harriet Harman, PMQs, 9 July 2008

The analysis

Really? It's not something parliament pulled her up on, but we'll assume it was a Freudian slip - or perhaps even a deliberate fluff to distance herself from her detail-obsessed boss. Harman wouldn't want to outshine him now, would she?

The claim

"Crime has fallen since we came into government."
Harriet Harman, PMQs, 9 July 2008

The analysis

It has - although it started to fall under the previous government, rather than in a post-1997 big bang.

It's also questionable how much of this Labour can claim to be responsible for - crime is both a perennial political hot potato, and a pretty complex beast affected by wider social factors (those "causes of crime" coined by a young Mr Blair) as well as direct government policy. We delved into the thorny issue of crime rates under Labour in our full-length FactCheck earlier this year.

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