{"id":52321,"date":"2020-08-21T13:26:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T12:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=52321"},"modified":"2020-08-21T13:26:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T12:26:54","slug":"the-uks-national-debt-is-not-2-trillion-its-only-1270-billion-and-theres-nothing-exceptional-about-that-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/08\/21\/the-uks-national-debt-is-not-2-trillion-its-only-1270-billion-and-theres-nothing-exceptional-about-that-at-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The UK&#8217;s national debt is not \u00c2\u00a32 trillion &#8211; it&#8217;s only \u00c2\u00a31,270 billion &#8211; and there&#8217;s nothing exceptional about that, at all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Office for National Statistics claimed that the so-called UK national debt was \u00a32 trillion this morning.<\/p>\n<p>To be candid, I think that\u2019s a politically motivated lie, and they can sue me if they like. I explain why here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Is the UK Debt over 2 trillion, according to the Office of National Statistic it is\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HEJAR5HAWvQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The reason why it\u2019s a lie is, in the first instance, that the government cannot owe itself money, and yet \u00a3735 billion of the so-called national debt is now owned by the government, and so cannot be included in the figure for debt.<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u2019s the fact that almost \u00a3200 billion of this supposed debt is actually deposits at National Savings and Investments, and to call that debt is grossly misleading.<\/p>\n<p>And if evidence is wanted, the government\u2019s audited Whole of Government Accounts agree with my position, stating debt net of quantitative easing, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Those promoting this claim do so to pave the way for cuts in government spending.<\/p>\n<p>It is shameful that the ONS play a part in this false accounting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Office for National Statistics claimed that the so-called UK national debt was \u00a32 trillion this morning. To be candid, I think that\u2019s a politically<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/08\/21\/the-uks-national-debt-is-not-2-trillion-its-only-1270-billion-and-theres-nothing-exceptional-about-that-at-all\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounting","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}