Angela Eagle
Main Page: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)Department Debates - View all Angela Eagle's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Chris Philp
What the statement will set out in the round is how we will get debt as a proportion of GDP falling in the medium term. That is the critical metric, and that is what the medium-term fiscal plan will deliver.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Can I just offer the Chief Secretary to the Treasury some gentle advice? If he refuses to accept that the fiscal event on 23 September has had any effect on what has happened in the markets since, that will not be reassuring for the markets. He needs to stop being in denial and admit that serious mistakes were made.
The Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions that there would be no public spending cuts, yet we know that, as a result of the fiscal event and the unfunded tax cuts, there is a £60 billion gap between expenditure and the money coming in. If there are no public spending cuts, that leaves only the reversal of the tax cuts to balance the books, does it not?
Chris Philp
I have explained in response to an earlier question that spending restraint is not the same as real-terms cuts. We do not plan real-terms cuts, but we do plan iron discipline when it comes to spending restraint. The answers to the hon. Lady’s questions will be set out in full at the fiscal statement, which will be accompanied by a full Office for Budget Responsibility scoring and a set of OBR forecasts. That is when all those questions will be answered very clearly.