The Chancellor has put the economy in that state just when it is essential that we should begin the work of rebuilding and expanding if we are to face the horrendous Crisis in the 1990s, when we will not have the oil revenues that have kept the Government afloat and allowed them to survive.

The economic Crisis of the 1990s forced the regime to implement liberalising reforms, but subsequent signs of recovery have been met with counter-reform and ideological reassertion.

The collapse of Soviet communism plunged Cuba into economic Crisis in the 1990s.

The point I was trying to make is that if a country has fiscal autonomy and issues debt in a currency other than its own, it may well get squeezed in the way seen not only in Greece, but in Italy and Spain, and in countries across Asia during the Asian financial Crisis in the 1990s.

I was an aid worker in the Balkans for almost 10 years during the Crisis in the 1990s, and I saw at first hand what it took to make somebody leave their home, their loved ones and the community they love.