The Financial Markets

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 18 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:42, 18 October 2022

Well, Llywydd, the Member deserved better from more senior Members of his group who ought to have advised him, before he stood up, not to offer a contribution of that sort on the floor of the Senedd. 'It's all the fault of Gordon Brown and the United States of America.' Well, even in a week in which the most extraordinary explanations have been offered, I don't think anybody has attempted to persuade us of that. I thank the Member for his explanation of the way that the gilt market works and its impact on pension liabilities. I think I probably had understood already that if you have a market in which nobody is prepared to buy, then the value of the goods that you're trying to sell inevitably goes down, and, when that happens, the person who is forced to sell faces a very bleak position. It's why the Bank of England, of course, was forced to intervene, spending billions and billions more that we will now have to pay for in the future. The catalyst for that was nothing said by Gordon Brown in 1997, nor was it anything to do with actions taken in the United States. It was the direct and predictable consequence of the recklessness with which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and the person who sacked him for agreeing with her embarked upon then.