Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman will obviously struggle ever to have anything that might achieve a cross-party consensus in the national interest, but I will come to the political point he is making in a second. First, let me return to the serious matter that is before the House.

The OBR’s charter states that

“The Government is responsible for all policy decisions and for policy costings, i.e. quantifying the direct impact of policy decisions on the public finances. Subject to receiving sufficient information from the Treasury to do so, the OBR will provide independent scrutiny and certification of the Government’s policy costings. The OBR will state whether it agrees or disagrees with the Government’s costings, or whether it has been given insufficient time or information to reach a judgement.”

It is our proposal that the OBR play that role for the next election, not just for current Governments but for prospective Governments.

I said in my letter to the head of the OBR of 22 September last year—this is not a proposal I am making today—setting out the detail of our proposal:

“The reform I am proposing would mean the Opposition would submit costings for proposed manifesto commitments on spending and tax—obtained from, for example, the House of Commons Library, Parliamentary Questions or the Institute for Fiscal Studies—and the OBR would ‘provide independent scrutiny and certification’ of those costings.”

Those are the exact words currently in the OBR’s charter.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Why does my right hon. Friend think that the Government do not welcome this cross-party consensus that the OBR should look at the Opposition parties’ proposals for Government?