Mervyn King says missing debt goal is 'acceptable' Mervyn King told Channel 4 News economic recovery would be slow and events in the eurozone would be of great importance. Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has endorsed tearing up the government's debt-reduction goal after he said it was "acceptable" to miss the target if the economy continued to grow slowly. In his first live TV interview in nearly 10 years in office, King said the weak state of the economy justified revising the target, which had been drawn up in better times. The governor's support will cheer George Osborne, who has come under pressure to revise his debt-cutting timetable from the left of the Conservative party. The prospect of extra welfare cuts and tax rises to put the government's finances back on track have caused panic in some quarters amid concerns that the next election will be won or lost on the government's economic record. Recent figures for government spending and tax receipts have left the Treasury's calculations in tatters and forced officials to prepare a climbdown ahead of his autumn statement in December. We're beginning to see a few signs now of a slow recovery, but it will be a slow recovery. After a banking crisis one can't expect to get back to normal and I fear it will take a long time," King told Channel 4 News. Given this situation, it might now be "acceptable" for the government to miss a key debt-cutting goal, he added. If it's because the world economy has grown slowly and so we, in turn, have grown slowly then it would be acceptable to be in that position, yes. "The plan did allow for the fact that if the economy were to grow slowly, then taxes would not rise as quickly and spending would be higher - so the deficit would be bigger," he added. King endorsed the coalition government's debt-reduction plans after the last election when the Bank of England and other forecasters believed the UK economy would grow by around 5% by the end of 2012. However, figures for the first two years of the administration show growth soon evaporated and the country entered a second recession in three years. Osborne has consistently blamed the downturn in the eurozone and insisted it was too early in the year to assess whether the government's budget was seriously off track. But a series of worse than expected spending deficits since April have forced a rethink, with some economists calculating the Treasury could be as much as £40bn over budget by the end of the financial year in April 2013. King said the eurozone was important to the health of the UK economy because 50% of exports still crossed the Channel. "What it will depend on critically, I think, is what happens in the euro area and also the rest of the world," he said. King said it was possible that EU politicians would fail to keep the currency club together with disastrous consequences for UK trade and British banks, which have a large exposure to the eurozone through subsidiaries and loans to EU companies. He said: "[Policymakers] have persisted with trying to keep all the countries in the eurozone ... and tried very hard to keep the show on the road. But I don't think there's any guarantee that they will be able to do that. The Bank of England has pumped £325bn into the economy to boost growth and is midway through a four-month programme that will add a further of £50bn. In the minutes of the last monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting central bank officials considered adding a further injection funds after a string of poor growth figures from the manufacturing and construction sectors. Economists believe it is likely the MPC will approve a further £50bn in November, which would take total asset purchases to £425bn. King did not directly address November's decision, but insisted the asset purchase programme was still effective and that the Bank was also committed to keeping down inflation, which has been above its 2% target since December 2009. On the Libor interest-rate fixing scandal that brought down the chief executive of Barclays, Bob Diamond, King said he was not responsible for wielding the axe on the high street bank's boss. He said the episode showed the banks in a poor light and reinforced the need for regulations that prevented a repeat of the 2008 banking crash. The regulators will issue their reports in due course, and prosecutions may well emerge and I'm sure that large fines on banks will emerge. All this is deeply unsatisfactory," he said. King said he had not found his job as stressful as supporting his favourite football team. He told Channel 4: "Supporting Aston Villa is much more stressful than being the governor of the Bank of England." On a serious point, it's a demanding job, clearly, and it's all-consuming - it takes up all my time. But it's not stressful in the sense that I have such good support at the Bank.