MADAM - Brian Gabbett (letters October 29, 2014) accused Michael Meacher of ‘selective amnesia’ in refuting the charge that the “Labour government created the financial crisis”.

That is palpable nonsense and is typical of Tory myths.

Prior to the crash, the economy was in good shape, the budget deficit was 2.6 per cent of GDP, a sustainable amount having regard to historical and international comparisons.

The situation changed owing to the fall in house prices in the USA, the collapse of the sub-prime market in mortgages, the collapse of Indy Mac as a result, followed by that of Lehmann Brothers, the complex financial instruments that few understood and problems in banks overseas including BNP Paribas.

None of that was the responsibility of the Labour government.

Nor was the collapse of Northern Rock and the need to bail out the banks in this country.

The crash that followed inevitably drove up the budget deficit due to a reduction in income from taxes and an increase in welfare spending.

However Alistair Darling in his 2008, 2009 and 2010 budgets tackled the problems with a mixture of stimulus and steps to reduce the deficit and at the time of the 2010 election the British economy was - slowly - recovering from the recession.

Osborne then pulled the plug on the economy by adopting extreme austerity measures reducing the income of the majority of people in this country (and hence income from taxation, increasing the deficit) while delaying the recovery that had already commenced.

Even Robert Chope, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, stated in March 2013 that “fiscal consolidation measures have reduced economic growth over the past couple of years” - that reduction in growth has continued.

Osborne’s much-vaunted target of clearing the deficit by 2015 is clearly going to fall well short.

It is untrue that the Labour Party failed to “fix the roof when the sun was shining” - indeed much expenditure was needed almost literally to fix “the roof” of the many poor-standard schools and hospitals left behind by the previous Tory governments - the Tory Party was asking for more, not less, expenditure.

Finally I seem to remember that a previous Tory chancellor left just such a note (“the cupboard is bare”) as Mr Gabbett refers to for his Labour successor.

Dick Greenslade

Rodborough