Hiding dodgy assets off the balance sheet has been a hot topic since the financial crisis took hold. It was mainly the banks that took heat for using the fianacially flexible accounting practice.

And the sanctimonious ones were the politicians.

But of course, off-balance-sheet practices have been used extensively by them too, conveniently hiding some of the rather large debts run up on PFI contracts by the current government. The Tories have claimed that they will be putting them back on the balance sheet – estimated at £32bn, they might as well join the rest of the bad news already on there due to the recession.