Not surprisingly, given 1) the economy isn’t currently growing and any recovery is forecast to be weak, and 2) the Government is continuing to maintain historically near-record levels of public spending, the national debt is forecast to continue rising throughout the lifetime of this Parliament. Yet politicians, including Nick Clegg as well as the media, persist in confusing the different concepts of deficit (at its simplest, the excess gap between what we earn and what we spend as a nation in a year) and debt (the accumulation over years of all our borrowing).

So, for the record, here are the public debt figures for the UK. The UK’s debt is increasing throughout this Parliament on the following three measures:

• Nominal figures: from £903bn (2010-11) to £1,251bn (2014-15);
• As %-age of GDP: from 61% (2010-11) to 69% (2014-15);
• At 2010-11 values: from £903bn (2010-11) to £1,125bn (2014-15).