1  This apparently unremarkable headline appeared on March 18^th and after the Chancellor’s Spring Statement which  saw a light at the end of the austerity tunnel. 

2 Unbelievably the two MPs, Ken Clarke and John Penrose, have had to write to the Chancellor pointing out that “official figures” inaccurately and over-optimistically exclude from the country's so-called debt  billions of pounds in future payments, including on PFI contracts and government  pensions. Reference to the “deficit” focuses only on an ‘overnight’ cash balance. 

3 This demonstrates that, though the point is widely understood, our political and manderinate  leaders, and treasury,  are so out of touch and living in the past that they persist in believing that only borrowing in the form of gilts by the treasury is real. It also shows up the ‘stone-age’ government accounting. 

4 In fact taxpayers are committed to paying the much greater total of IOUs. The traditional "debt" is around £1.8trillion but the true debt approaches three times that.(See the attached one-page WGA summary). 

5 In simple terms as an example, the employer's contribution to a person's pension for completed service is money costed in tax that has not been set aside pending retirements but spent on other things leaving the liability as uncontrolled debt. It has been borrowed. There is no difference in essence between borrowing from public employees and from 'the market'. Together they add up to much more than the official "borrowing". Because spent there is no invested  income retention or capital protection. 

6 Admitting government accounting failure "No company CFO (Chief Financial Officer)  would last long if they only bothered with their firm's bonds and ignored all their other liabilities completely" say MPs Ken Clarke and John Penrose. But even that understates the point by some margin because ignoring management accounting.  The company CFO has a total unified accounting system. Without it delegation and feedback data flows wouldn't reconcile and 'scoreboard' and balance sheet totals wouldn’t keep up, rendering the whole  useless. 

7 The 'overnight' cash balance is quickly known. But the present Full Whole Government Accounts (WGA) disgracefully take 20 months without budget values and when available for decision-making, substantive consideration and management attention are disregarded by the Lords of the Treasury and unsupported by the unqualified Permanent Secretary. 

8 Accounting failure extends to the budget planning process. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and National Audit Office (NAO) know this but are faced with political and treasury paralysis. As reported here the PAC has asked for the right system to be installed but the treasury doesn't want to understand let alone act. Politicians mislead us and themselves  by claiming, priestlike, that the "deficit" means what it doesn't. The two MPs are calling on the Chancellor for a "full national balance sheet" at future Budgets.