Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 5 December 2018.
I'm afraid the Cabinet Secretary, in disagreeing with me, is also disagreeing with the former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, and indeed with Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, whose political views are very far from mine and are actually not too far from the Cabinet Secretary's, because Mervyn King has said that he is saddened to see the Bank of England unnecessarily drawn into this project fear type of exercise. And Paul Krugman—no friend of Brexit—describes the bank's estimates as 'black box numbers' that are 'dubious' and 'questionable'. So, when such a broad range of economic analysts of world renown are able to dismiss these kinds of hysterical prophecy, I can't understand why the Cabinet Secretary himself, in the interests of a sober analysis and debate—which I agree with him the chief economist has added to our deliberations yesterday—can't calm things down by agreeing with me that it does us no good whatsoever to have forecasts for the future that are wildly, alarmingly out of kilter with reality.