It is all very well to discuss wealth funds, as Sarah Gordon does (“How to design a UK wealth fund is baffling Labour and the Tories”, Opinion, January 5), but Britain’s problem is more basic than that. We do not save enough. For most of the time since the financial crisis of 2008, national saving, net of depreciation, has been negative — the UK’s capital stock is being used up or sold off to foreigners to pay for our consumption habits.
Governments have taken a considerable interest in government saving — or rather the lack of it. We have a target that the national debt should be falling — but not just yet.
A prudent government would take the same interest in national saving.
At the very least it would widen the scope of the Office for Budget Responsibility to oblige it to report on national saving and the national balance sheet, as well as government saving and the public sector balance sheet.
Professor Martin Weale
King’s Business School and Department of Political Economy, King’s College, London
London WC2, UK
