The Financial Markets

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 18 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 18 October 2022

Well, Llywydd, of course, it's not fair that we have all been subjected to the failed experiment—a failed experiment that took less than a month to collapse in front of us. And the reason it's particularly unfair is that the experiment was doomed to failure from the outset. It didn't need to come in contact with the reality of the markets for people to have understood that. An economic approach based on the failed theories of trickle-down economics, depending upon uncosted borrowing, was always going to fail. Now, in that failed experiment, as I said, Llywydd, people across the United Kingdom will now pay the price. I'll give just one example: because of the increase in the mortgage rate that we now see as a result of what has happened, by 2024, people across the United Kingdom will have paid out £26 billion in additional interest payments—£26 billion taken out of the pockets of families right across the United Kingdom. Now, it's not more than a couple of weeks ago that the Prime Minister was trying to portray those people who didn't agree with her failed ideas as anti-growth. That was never ever the case, of course, but what's now guaranteed is that the recession the Bank of England says we are already in will be deeper and longer than it otherwise would have been, because that £26 billion, Llywydd, would have been available for people to spend in shops, to use in hospitality, to do the things that keeps the economy going. That £26 billion by itself will now no longer be there to support the economy back into growth, and, here in Wales, this time next year, the average person with a mortgage will be paying £2,300 more in a year than they would be had interest rates stayed where they were in the current quarter. That is the scale of the failed experiment, and that's only one example of it.