Balanced Budget Rule

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley]

Before we went to vote I was talking about the moral case for low debt and ensuring that the servicing of that debt was as minimal as possible, to retain and support our ability to ensure economic activity in the future. It was not for nothing that Herbert Hoover intoned sarcastically:

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”

In this context, perhaps we can bestow a few less blessings on them in the future.

Putting aside the morality of debt, the key issue, which should drive all politicians regarding the accretion of Government debt, is the year-on-year cost of servicing and holding it, as mentioned earlier. The proponents of unfunded spending may highlight how the markets are not that concerned with relatively high borrowing so long as it can be funded. That may be the case. Let us hope, for all of our sakes, that we do not enter a period of high interest rates in the coming decades when national debt is to be rolled over.

The opportunity cost of that funding, on an ongoing basis, is much less understood in this place than in public discourse. It comprises a tax, year on year, on today’s generation for yesterday’s spending. Unlike the total debt to GDP ratio, which has oscillated wildly in the last century due to wartime spending, the cost of servicing the UK’s debt has been on an upward trajectory for the last century. Adjusted for inflation, the cost of servicing that debt has risen from an average of £12 billion per annum between 1900 and 1960 to nearly £30 billion at the turn of the 21st century. Since 2009, that average has hit £43 billion every year. In total, since 1900 the UK has spent something like £2.5 trillion just on servicing its debt. About half of that has been spent since I was born—I still like to think of myself as being relatively young.

The bad news is not likely to stop there. With the continuing running of deficits until well into the 2020s, the annual cost of servicing that debt is projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility to hit more than £50 billion by the start of the next decade. In this Parliament alone, debt servicing costs are projected to be about a quarter of a trillion pounds over the five years. The sums are huge and growing. They represent a significant opportunity cost to the UK as a whole.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. To put it into sharp focus, does he share my concern that the annual cost of servicing the United Kingdom’s national debt is more than we spend on schools? As a matter of morality, we need to keep debt under control so that we can truly allocate resources where they are most valued.

[Lee Rowley]

I could not concur more with my hon. Friend, as I will address in my next paragraph. Putting this into context, about 8% of all current Government spending is diverted towards debt servicing. In 2015, that made interest payments the joint fourth largest proportion of spending by the UK after health and welfare, and on a par with defence. Spending on education, the police and transport pales in comparison with the budget allocated to debt interest. That budget could be used, as my hon. Friend has just outlined, for myriad other more socially useful activities, such as paying for a hospital to be built every four days, or for approximately 2,500 nurses, police or teachers to be hired every day throughout the year. For those of us with a more centre-right political outlook, the £45 billion spent on interest costs in 2015 could even have been used to reduce the size of the state through tax cuts, perhaps as large as 8% or 9% in the standard rate of income tax. If the populace actually knew that such a significant chunk of the taxes they paid every year was being used to pay for spending chalked up 20, 30 or 50 years ago, would they be content doing the same or worse for their children, given the sacrifices and opportunity costs involved?

We know what the problem is, so why do we not just do something about it? Why do we need a legislative solution for this issue? The problem is that we as a country are not that good at stopping adding to our debt. Our Labour friends—who have temporarily deserted the Chamber—have a tendency to spend money without a huge amount of regard for the implications. My party usually ends up having to clean up the mess. Even on my side, there are not insignificant number of people who cannot resist the temptation to spend when it comes down to it.

Our parliamentary system and representative democracy are excellent at pushing the cause of individual spending requirements, many of which, I do not contest, are no doubt noble. Yet there are few people who will exercise proper restraint or promote proper fiscal responsibility to ensure that all of these myriad pots of money are truly paid for. It is always tomorrow’s problem. Mañana, mañana, as they say. The numbers show just that: over the last century, the United Kingdom has consistently increased its national debt and its deficit spending. Both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP, the UK’s debt burden has grown significantly since the turn of the 20th century. The recent political consensus in the UK demonstrated a clear disregard—if we are honest—for the consequences of deficit spending.

Prior to the second world war, deficit spending tended to be closely correlated with war and national defence. In more than half the years between 1900 and 1939, the UK ran an absolute surplus, including during much of the late 1920s, during economic crisis. Since 1945, however, the achievement of a surplus in the UK’s national spending has been relatively rare. Only 13 out of 71 years saw the deficit being reduced, and on only two separate occasions—the late 1980s and the late 1990s—has the UK run surpluses for more than a couple of years at a time.

If all that sounds like one long criticism, it is not intended that way. It is just a statement of fact. Whether poverty or plenty, feast or famine, there is one almost universal constant: the Government spend more than they take in. That is not unique to the United Kingdom, but a feature of western democracy: red ink reigns supreme. The main variable in western liberal democracies is whether they overspend by a little or a lot. France has never run a Government surplus as a proportion of GDP since the 1970s, nor has Italy. The United States has managed to do so only once since 1960. Even Canada, one of the more enlightened in tackling public debt, has only managed to run surpluses in less than one third of financial years since the 1970s. The Maastricht protocol on excessive debt procedure says that countries should not exceed a 3% borrowing ceiling. Just think on that for a moment: there is a protocol that automatically sets an expectation of overspending—just that it is not excessive. And we wonder why debt has significantly increased in most western democracies over the past 30 years. There is an urgent requirement, over the long term, to address this inherent deficit bias in democracies.

The idea that we need to take more drastic legislative solutions is not that new; it is just that we have never properly applied it to national spending before. Sure, the Government have their charter of budget responsibility and an equivalent office creating the data and watching what is happening. Yet the charter requires people only to identify that they are changing policy. It does not really hold people to account or limit them.

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[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to say a few words in this debate, Mr Stringer, and I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on securing it.

This is such an important issue, yet looking around this Chamber—in which there are only a few people—we could be forgiven for thinking that it is somehow a dry, bookish or niche issue. However, the reality is that what Governments of all stripes do in respect of the public finances resonates in people’s lives, including the lives of people who might be some of the most vulnerable in our community. If we lose control of the public finances, it is not the rich and the powerful who suffer, but the poor, the sick and the vulnerable. That is why it is so important that we engage with this issue, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on doing so.

However, part of the problem with discussing this issue is that we as a political generation fail to communicate about it properly. That is because if people are anything like me, once a figure gets above, say, £50 million or so, it just sounds like a very big number, and what we sometimes fail to do is to put these figures in context. How many Members of Parliament would be able to tell people the total budget that we spend every year as a nation? I suspect fewer than half. As a matter of fact, it is something in the region of £840 billion. That is an important figure to keep in mind, because it puts in context what has happened to our national debt over the last 10 years. Back in 2007, our total national debt—the total pile that we had to service as a nation—was about £500 billion or so. Now it is £1.8 trillion, and as my hon. Friend indicated that debt burden has to be serviced in some way.

Again, it is all very well to say, “Oh well, it costs roughly £50 billion a year to service that debt pile”, but that is a meaningless figure unless we place it in some sort of context. As has already been said, that sum is higher than the total schools budget. People like me, who represent places like Cheltenham, go and speak to headteachers about the pressures they face in their schools, where they might be looking to increase the high needs budget, which is about £6 billion. However, the reality is that we spend about eight times more on debt interest than we do on high needs funding, which supports special schools in our country, and more indeed than we spend on defence.

To put things further into context, the mighty United States is currently in shutdown because of the inability to agree on how to pay for the US President’s border wall. The sum required is about $6 billion. To put things another way, every year we spend, on debt interest alone, a sum equivalent to about 10 of Trump’s border walls. It is a huge sum of money.

The reason this issue is important is because it has an impact on people’s lives. Here are two things that I think are axiomatic. First, there is no national security without economic security. In other words, unless we live within our means, we cannot be sure that our military and indeed our intelligence agencies, such as GCHQ, which is in my constituency, can rely on the knowledge that they will have the resources they need to keep our country safe into the future. Secondly, we cannot have economic security without fiscal security. In other words, unless we keep control of our finances, when economic shocks come, which they will, the nation will be ill-prepared to deal with them. Put bluntly, the cupboard will be bare.

That is precisely what happened in Greece. That nation had a debt to GDP ratio of about 90% to 100%, and when the storm came it was unable to deal with it. As a result, as I indicated before, it was the poor, the sick and the vulnerable who suffered, with Greece’s equivalent of NHS funding being slashed by half. The reason why that is so sobering is that the UK’s debt to GDP ratio is in the high 80s; it is not a million miles away from where Greece was 10 years or so ago. That is an important point to raise, and as a political group we need to do better in explaining its impact, but I say respectfully to the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) that the Opposition need to be straight with people as well. It is easy enough to say, “We are going to spend £1 trillion”, but in the same sentence, Labour ought to explain the costs that will entail each and every year so that people can understand what that offer means.

The reality is that if Labour wants to spend another £1 trillion, that is absolutely fine for my generation—no doubt there will be more money for the NHS, and so on and so forth—but the next generation will suffer, because before they can pay for a single soldier, nurse, doctor or teacher, they will have to pay vastly more in debt interest. If that argument is made, people can make their choices, but everyone who does so has to be straight with the British people. I regret to say that that has not always been quite as transparent as it might be. There is a moral case for living within our means, and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire has done an important service by making that case today. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to say these few words.

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[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr McCabe. I thank the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) for securing this debate, which gives us an opportunity to brush aside some of the myths that he referred to. I also thank the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore), the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who spoke eloquently and sensibly, and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who referred to the Greeks. I remind him that Thucydides said that

“while the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”

That is precisely what the Tories have done. They talk about the poor all the time, but it is the strong that they stick up for, and they do it time after time.

The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire forgot to mention that the global financial crisis that the Tories use time and again started in the United States. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cheltenham can sit there and pretend to snore, but that is the reality: until the Tories accept that fact, we will not be able to move on. There is a danger that there could be accusations of dishonesty and disingenuousness—I am not making those accusations, Mr McCabe—until those on the Government Benches begin to acknowledge that.

The issue is not just about fixing the roof before the rain comes through; we were all in it together at the time, and we all know that we have not been in it together under Tory policies. The poor have been getting a stuffing year in, year out. The Tories have also missed every target they have set. Talk about a moving target! The situation was supposed to be sorted out years ago. The hon. Member for Cheltenham said there was a debt of £800 billion, but the Tories have doubled the debt since they came into power. They have borrowed more money than Labour ever has.

[Alex Chalk]

We have this extraordinary situation where on the one hand Labour complains that the national debt has gone up too much, and on the other it complains that the Conservatives are not spending enough. That kind of illogicality would embarrass a 10-year-old. Surely the hon. Gentleman can do better.

[Peter Dowd]

Of course I will do better. At the end of the day, it is about priorities. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said, the Tories have spent the money in the wrong way. The hon. Member for Southport effectively accepts that. We have had £15 billion wasted on the introduction of universal credit by the Tory party, so let us get a little bit real.

I am sick to death of talking about how useless the Tory party is, so I will speak about Labour’s fiscal credibility, which I am sure will get a certain amount of unanimity in the Chamber, and the issue of balancing. [Interruption.] I am happy to deal with it. We could have discussed the issue in a mature and grown-up way with adults in the room. Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book called “Adults in the Room”, but there are not many in the Chamber today. I suggest Members have a read of that book; it will show them what happened to Greece.

Following discussions with our advisers, including Professor Joseph Stiglitz, on 11 March 2016, the shadow Chancellor announced a fiscal credibility rule, which has five key elements. I am happy to set that out in the symposium that hon. Members are here to attend. First, Labour committed to closing the deficit on day-to-day spending within five years. Secondly, we committed to excluding investment from that commitment so that we can borrow to invest, which is important. Thirdly, we undertook that Government debt as a proportion of trend GDP would be lower at the end of a five-year parliamentary term than at the start.

Fourthly, we committed to giving the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England the power to suspend the rule if it determines that interest rates are not having their usual effect due to the lower bound. That would allow stimulus action to step in when monetary policy is ineffective. Fifthly, we would shift the reporting requirements of the Office for Budget Responsibility so that it reports to Parliament, rather than the Treasury, and ensures ongoing Government compliance, to which the hon. Member for Dundee East referred. All the facts are there, so let Parliament have them. The elements of the rule mean that a Labour Government would not need to borrow to fund our day-to-day expenditure.

[Alex Chalk]

The United Kingdom last lived within its means in 2001. Under a Labour Government, when would it next do so?

[Peter Dowd]

If the hon. Gentleman listens to what I have to say, he will find out in due course. [Laughter.] The hon. Gentlemen laugh and snigger. Meanwhile, millions of people suffer under their policies. They should stop their sniggering and listen. I know that the Tories think they have some divine right to rule and some divine economic ability, but they have not. They need to show a little humility occasionally and listen to other people.

Unlike the Conservatives’ different, haphazard and unsuccessful attempts to achieve fiscal credibility, our fiscal credibility rule has three criteria for good economic policy. I know that economic good in economic policy is an alien concept to the Tories, but they might learn one or two things if they listen to what I have to say. The three criteria are: responsibility in economic management; recognition of the value of long-term public investment; and flexibility for changing economic circumstances. A Government trying to bind themselves into a model that has palpably failed all over the world are not particularly helpful. There has to be some flexibility.

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[Alex Chalk]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way before he sits down?

[Peter Dowd]

I have finished—I am sorry.

[Alex Chalk]

He did not answer my question.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Order. Have you finished, Mr Dowd?