Budget Deficit

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Barnett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assumptions they are currently using about what the scale of the deficit will be on 31 March 2012, and how this compares to what had been predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility at the time of the last budget.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the Office for Budget Responsibility published its most recent forecast on 29 November 2011. Its forecast for public sector net borrowing in 2011-12 is £127 billion. This represented an increase of £5 billion since the forecast produced for Budget 2011. The OBR attributed the worse economic outlook to three factors: the sharp increase in global commodity prices over 2010 and 2011; the impact of the euro area crisis; and the ongoing structural impact of the financial crisis.

[Lord Barnett]

Actually, my Lords, I knew that. My Question was about assumptions in the Treasury; surely its officials cannot sit there twiddling their thumbs twice a year waiting for the OBR forecast. Is not the major problem that the Chancellor has concentrated to such a degree on the deficit that he has lost track of where that is taking him? The plain fact is that it is a lack of growth that is doing the damage. Now, as we know, the Chancellor has had to extend the balancing of the budget to 2017, and he may well have to extend that further. Many of the Chancellor’s friends who supported him, like the IMF and the OECD, are now saying that if the position deteriorates, as it is clearly doing, then he should be more flexible. Would he consider, for example, something that would help in the short term—namely, finding the odd few billion, which would not be very much in relation to the total deficit, in order to kick-start the privately funded infrastructure plans that he has spoken about previously? Would that not at least help to alleviate some of the problems?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I shall try to deal with at least some of the noble Lord’s supplementary questions. First, there is a process of exchanging and discussing numbers between the OBR and the Treasury under the memorandum of understanding. The details of all communications between the OBR and Ministers will be published in due course on the OBR’s website, as they were in the run-up to last year’s Budget.

Secondly, on the question of the deficit reduction plan, it is interesting to look at the recent IFS green budget, which does a comparison between the coalition plans and the relatively sober Alistair Darling plans rather than the Ed Balls plans. The comparison shows that up to 2016-17 the cumulative impact of Mr Darling’s policy would have been that debt under a Labour Government was £201 billion higher than it will be under the forecast for the coalition Government. As the markets have made clear this week, if we listened to suggestions about making increased spending commitments now, our interest rates would go sky high and our industry would be crippled. We are sticking to our plans, but the private sector will contribute to significant infrastructure investment of the sort that both the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and I would welcome.