Ministerial Code: Policy Announcements

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Baroness Twycross

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We do. To anybody who watched that Budget and who had not been involved in its development and thought that they knew every single detail that was announced in the Chancellor’s speech, I would question whether they were watching the same speech as I was.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what I said yesterday, but I was outraged by the complete circus of trailing in advance and trying things out that has gone on for three months while this Budget was prepared. There were no surprises to anybody in today’s Budget, and they got away with it as far as the markets were concerned—but I said I would not repeat that. I now do not understand what the policy is. The Minister sounds as though she still asserts that it is a serious matter to trail in advance the contents of the Budget before they have been announced to Parliament. She says it with a completely straight face. My learned noble friend Lord Macpherson, who was with me in the Treasury in the 1990s, when we did not have leaks of any kind—

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

We did not—even the Cabinet did not know what was going to be in the Budget until the day before, because someone in the Cabinet would have leaked it.

Will the Minister not acknowledge that this Government are now approaching Budgets on the basis that things have to be tried out with the public and various Labour lobbies, and nastier things leaked in advance to lower their impact? It is all deliberate media management nowadays and the old obligations to Parliament are, in practice, being completely, deliberately and openly abandoned.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I find the outrage from Opposition Members to be in the category of faux outrage. As I said earlier, the Speaker’s comments were heard by Ministers across the Government, and Treasury Ministers have been hardly out of the other place this week, with Statements and Question Time. I cannot see how anybody could assert that all the decisions in the Budget—which makes difficult choices to fix the foundations of the economy and public services in this country—were trailed in advance.