Autumn Statement

Andrew Love Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. Low interest rates are helping to keep people in their homes, mortgage payments down and businesses going. If hon. Members want to know what the alternative would be, they should look across the Channel to European countries in the middle of the debt storm, with interest rates going up. We can see that is a path that we must avoid, but we will only do so if we do not follow the policies advocated by that lot opposite.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Chancellor now take the opportunity to admit at the Dispatch Box that £158 billion is the deterioration in the forecast that has just been announced? How long will it now take to balance the books, and is not the statement today an admission that this country will have more severe austerity going forward?

[Mr Osborne]

I said that the borrowing forecast had deteriorated, and—unlike the Labour party—I set up an independent body to ensure that those figures are independently verified and not fiddled, as they were by the shadow Chancellor when he was in office. I can confirm that borrowing would be £100 billion higher if we had pursued the spending policies set out by the Labour party.