Archbishop's sermon to Brown on spending our way out of crisis



The Archbishop of Canterbury and Gordon Brown were at loggerheads last night over the morality of the Government's plans for Britain to spend its way out of recession.

Dr Rowan Williams took the extraordinary step of suggesting that Labour's high-spending solution to the economic crisis was like 'an addict returning to the drug'.

The leader of the Anglican faith also encouraged people to ignore the Government's encouragement to go shopping to save the economy.

Dr Rowan Williams said Labour's high-spending solution to the economic crisis was like 'an addict returning to the drug'

But his intervention prompted Mr Brown, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, to invoke scripture by insisting he would not 'walk on by' when others were in difficulty.

The Prime Minister appeared to be likening himself to the Good Samaritan in the Bible parable and the Archbishop to the priest who ignored the plight of a robbery victim.

Dr Williams admitted that his assault on flagship Labour policy would be seen by some as 'suicidally silly'.



It is virtually unheard of for a senior cleric to attack the Government so directly, or for a Prime Minister to challenge an Archbishop of Canterbury on how the Bible should be interpreted.



But Dr Williams insisted somebody had to speak out about the 'moral' failings at the heart of Britain's economic difficulties.

Asked about the Prime Minister's economic rescue package, he said: 'I worry about that because it seems a little bit like the addict returning to the drug.

'What I'm worried about is anything that pushes us straight back into the kind of spiral we were in before.

'It is about what is sustainable in the long term and if this is going to drive us back into the same spin, I do not think that is going to help us. I hope people will understand that spending itself is about need before it is about serving the economy in the abstract.'

In response, Mr Brown said that as the son of a church minister he always listened to senior clerics, but added: 'Every time someone becomes unemployed or loses their home or a small business fails it is our duty to act and we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems.

'That's the reason why our fiscal policy is designed to give real help to families and businesses and to give them that help now.'

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Bible tells how a man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho is attacked by robbers and left for dead. It adds: 'And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.'

Dr Williams's intervention echoes the Conservative argument that Labour is storing up problems for future generations with its reliance on debt.

Yesterday official figures showed public borrowing soared to a record £16billion in November.

Dr Williams added: 'When the Bible uses the word "repentance", it doesn't just mean beating your breast, it means getting a new perspective and that is perhaps what we are shrinking away from.'



