Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Chris Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Let me start with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He is a very clever man—he went to public school, I believe—but he was being deliberately obtuse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) pointed out, he suggested that somehow the OBR would have to take account of every possible nuance and potential spending commitment that a shadow Minister might make at an obscure public meeting in a village hall in some obscure little village, perhaps in North East Somerset. Perhaps he has not had time—he is a very busy man—to read the motion tabled by the Labour party, but as my hon. Friend pointed out, we are asking the OBR to audit the manifesto, not inadvertent comments that may have been made off the cuff at an obscure meeting in a village hall in North East Somerset.

The Minister had the temerity—I will put it like that—to suggest that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor was using this proposition as a fig leaf. How dare she! If anybody is responsible for indulging in trying to use a fig leaf, it is the Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government Front-Bench team. They suggested that somehow the OBR could not manage this proposal and that it would be unable to scrutinise things as an independent body. They said, “It is a new organisation, it is very young and it couldn’t quite manage it; let’s get the general election out of the way first.” However, members of the Treasury team know full well that our propositions are properly costed and would be doable. This is about the sort of country and society we want, and perhaps about the ideology and values that underpin Labour, compared with those that underpin the Government.

The truth—this is no coincidence—is that the Chancellor is not here because he is frightened. If I may quote the words of the late Margaret Thatcher, he is

“Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Could not take it? Cannot stand it?”—[Official Report, 19 April 1983; Vol. 41, c. 159.]

That would be especially so if the Labour proposition was actually subject to an independent audit by the OBR. That is the real reason why the Government are opposing the Labour motion.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Is this not also about wanting to maintain the status quo, and is it not revealing what that says about the Government and their political priorities?

[Chris Williamson]

Very much so. For all the great talk about a different approach to politics that the Prime Minister suggested he wanted to herald in, this is the very worst of the old politics.

The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) thought the proposal a bad idea in principle, but the British people deserve better than what they have had, and they certainly deserve better than what they get from the Conservatives. Routinely, what we see from Conservative Members, with their friends in the right-wing media, is a hysterical outpouring of misrepresentation of Labour manifesto proposals.

I remember Labour’s “double whammy” of tax and spend that the Conservatives used in 1992, and the VAT bombshell and all that nonsense, when we had actually gone to some lengths to be straight and honest with the British public and produce a shadow Budget. Yes, it was clear there would have been some tax increases, but they would have been for the richest people in society; eight out of 10 people would have benefited from Labour’s shadow Budget, but that was not what the Conservatives said or what was portrayed by the right-wing media. Had we had the opportunity of an independent audit of that shadow Budget, it would have been clear that the Conservatives were misrepresenting—or not, as the case might be—Labour’s proposals.

I understand why the Government are trying to resist the motion, but I want to see our proposals audited. On housing, for example, instead of giving billions of pounds to private landlords, it would be better value to invest that money in building houses for people. Surely, that would be a better use of money. It would be good for the OBR to scrutinise and audit that.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is doing a great job of getting rid of some of the misrepresentations and nonsense that we talked about earlier. The shadow Chancellor made it clear earlier that he was proposing that the OBR would only provide independent scrutiny and certification of the policy costings of political parties with at least 5% of the seats in the House of Commons. That is an important point. We are not referring to every draughty hall or every party, however few seats it holds. Those points should be made clear, and I hope that he agrees that this shows that Government Members were just not listening.

[Chris Williamson]

I very much agree. It is pretty clear that Government Members have closed minds and closed ears. Nobody is so deaf as those who refuse to hear. It is an inconvenient truth that our proposal would take the partisanship out of election campaigns to some extent and ensure that the British people get a clearer picture of the respective merits of the Conservative offer and of Conservative values. It is perfectly legitimate for the Conservatives to say, “We want to look after and enrich the wealthiest people in our country.” They are perfectly entitled to do that—perfectly entitled to impoverish the vast majority of people and force down wages—and we are perfectly entitled to propose our alternative.

We want to ensure that the vast majority of the British people—ordinary working people—actually benefit from the economic growth that, thankfully, we are seeing now, but most of the economic growth in the country today is going not into the pockets of ordinary people, but to the top 1% of society. I want to take away the opportunity for us to misrepresent each other’s policies and limit the opportunity for negative campaigning. A lot of people are turned off by negative campaigning, but it can be very effective. Our proposal would be a force for good. It is what the British people deserve, and the British people will make up their own minds if the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat poodles vote against this motion tonight.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—