Autumn Forecast

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I can confirm the figures that he quoted. The relevance is that, for all the rebalancing of the economy that we are doing and the very significant rebalancing of the welfare system, the shift of jobs out of the public sector is now very significantly below what was achieved even within the past 20 years in the early 1990s. Therefore, we should have confidence in the productive capability of the private sector to absorb that number of jobs many times over. I can only stand by the figures for the net increase of employment that are set out by the OBR in its tables.

[Lord Turnbull]

Can the Minister explain how the results of the main findings of this report were extensively reported in the press over the weekend and indeed this morning? It says on page two that the Treasury was given the final version 24 hours in advance. It leaves the rather worrying conclusion that perhaps that process, which was brought about by the creation of the Statistics Commission, has not proved as watertight as we might have hoped.

[Lord Sassoon]

I, indeed, read some of the newspapers over the weekend with interest, but the forecasts have been handed over exactly in the way that the OBR suggested. My reading of the press was that they were making educated guesses because the forecasts of the OBR in respect of this year and next year have moved much in line with market forecasts. The press are always bound to speculate in contexts such as this one. Indeed, that is what they were doing.