Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have stressed the recent recession is worse than previous downturns, placing the blame squarely on Labour’s shoulders.

Earlier this year, Conservative David Cameron said: “Our recession, the great recession, is the longest and deepest since the war”.

While Lib Dem Vince Cable has said: “The recession is the longest since the second world war – now a year and a half of falling production.”

Such claims are proven to be accurate, when GDP figures are examined. From the second quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2009, GDP fell. These six consecutive quarters of negative growth outstrip the length of all recessions since the war.

The recession was also deeper than those that occurred in the post-war period. The fall in GDP of 6.25 per cent during the most recent recession was indeed deeper than the early nineties recession (-2.54 per cent), the early eighties recession (-4.7 per cent), the early seventies (-3.31 per cent), or the recession in 1956 (-1.39 per cent).

Despite the accepted severity of the recession, the Government has sought to find positive comparisons to defend its policies to boost the economy.

For instance at Prime Minister’s Questions on 17 March, Gordon Brown told MPs that “unemployment is half what it was in the 1990s”.

The Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has also claimed the current recession compared favourably with the situation in the nineties.

In a speech on 19 March, he told the Federation of Small Businesses: ““Business failure rates are half those of the recession of the early 90s. Mortgage repossessions are also half.”       

Using these measures, does the recession recession compare so favourably with the 1990s?

Looking at the claimant count figures provided by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) there appears to be some grounding for Mr Brown’s claim. 

The seasonally adjusted number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance peaked in December 1992 at 2,960,300 and currently stands at 1,585,100, which, if taking the broad approach of rounding to the nearest half million, gives the Prime Minister’s claim some basis.

However the ONS website clearly states that the claimant count is not an official measure of unemployment.

The ONS has compiled historically comparable data for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) measure of unemployment. The most recent figure is  2.44 million. The highest figure on record for the nineties is 3.03 million, for January 1993, which calls into question Mr Brown's claim on unemployment figures.

The highest unemployment rate given for the nineties is 10.7 per cent again from January 1993, while the latest data available in the table put the rate at 7.8 per cent, again well short of half.

While a Downing Street spokesperson said the claimant count was a “robust” measure of those claiming benefits, the official measure of unemployment shows Mr Brown’s claim is not accurate. At no point during the 1990s, was the official unemployment rate double the current level.

Rating 2/5

Full Fact contacted the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) for the source of Lord Mandelson’s claims.

The figures on repossessions come from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) and comparing data from 1991 with the figures for 2009. We went to the CML, who confirmed the claim checked out.

In the second half of 2009 there were 21,900 repossessions which represented 0.2 per cent of all outstanding mortgages. In the second half of 1991 there was 38,900 repossessions, and crucially the percentage of outstanding mortgages was 0.4 per cent - double the 2009 rate.

The CML says that it is more valid to compare the percentage of outstanding mortgages rather than the total number of reposessions. Using this analysis shows the figures support Lord Mandelson's claim.

“If all you were doing, which is what lot of  reports do is just compare the number of repossessions in one period with the number of repossessions in a different period then actually you're only telling half of the story. You need to know how that relates to the total stock of mortgages,” a spokeswoman told Full Fact.

Claim rating 5/5

To check the second part of the Business Secretary’s claim that dealt with business failures, we spoke to Experian, who compile figures on business insolvency rates. 

Accessing the full data set for both the recession of the early 1990s and the recent recession is restricted to Experian’s clients, but we were able to obtain certain figures.

Comparing the third quarter of 1991 with the third quarter of 2009 (the last quarter of negative growth in each recession) the business insolvency rate for 1991 was 0.55 per cent while the corresponding figure for 2009 was 0.29 per cent. Not strictly half, but not a million miles away.

Indeed the most recent business insolvency figures show that the current rate is less than half the level it reached at points during the early 1990s.  In the last quarter of 2009 was 0.30 per cent, in the last quarter of 1992 it was 0.80 per cent.

“It is purely the companies listed at Companies House, so it would be limited companies”, Experian told Full Fact this means the figures quoted by Lord Mandelson may not paint the complete picture.

To check the full story, we also spoke to the Insolvency Service, who provided us with another set of figures. Using these figures, it appears Lord Mandelson may even been underselling his claim. the Insolvency service figures suggest business failures are now one third the rate of the nineties recession. 

However this in based on a comparison with the third quarter of 1993, when the recession of the early nineties ended in the third quarter of 1991.

This raises a slight problem in comparison, since business failures are a lagging indicator, so normally rise after the recession is over. This means it is possible that the current figure could also rise despite the economy moving out of recession. 

Nevertheless the two sets do not undermine the broad thrust of the claim made by the Business Secretary.

Rating 4/5

Looking at government and opposition claims about the recession, it seems both sides have largely made accurate statements.

Even taking the Prime Minister’s oversight on unemployment it is true that, despite the depth and severity of the recession, unemployment, repossessions and business failures are not as high as they were in the economic problems of the 1990s.

Of course, critics of the Government will point out that at the end of the recession in the 1990’s the deficit was not £167 billion.