stella creasy.ackle the economic hangover left by the pandemic. alistair darling, george osborne and philip hammond, who between them ran the treasury between 2008 and 2019, gave their prescriptions for future taxes, creating jobs and supporting businesses, with little real disagreement between them. when we get to the happy day when we're recovering and we're on the path to recovery, my view is quite clear that, yes, we're going to have very high debts, like we had at the end of the second world war, but one of the things that a government like ours can do, because we're a large economy, and no—one doubts our credit worthiness, you can actually carry that for some period. but what i would be very concerned about is if we got ourselves in the situation where, if you like, in the recovery stage, you start bringing down things prematurely, you stop the growth and you drive the country back into a recession. if you want to stimulate the economy, the most obvious this is a a time—limited vat reduction.