Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

David Rutley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

No—once was enough. That was an encouraging thing for the Chancellor to say.

I have raised the matter in the House a number of times over the past nine months and each time I have urged us, in the spirit set out by the Chancellor, the Chair of the Select Committee and Mr Chote, to try to put politics aside and do the right thing. I am pleased to say that the Chief Secretary told the House, at Treasury questions a few months ago:

“The idea is well worth further consideration.”—[Official Report, 11 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 173.]

We have not yet managed to achieve that cross-party consensus, but we still have a couple of hours.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

All Members on both sides of the House regard Robert Chote as an outstanding head of the OBR. Has the shadow Chancellor not seen his comments that it is better to consider the issue at the beginning of the next Parliament, rather than rush into it for 2015 and risk undermining support for the idea, which we all think is important, in the longer term?

[Ed Balls]

Either we find reasons not to proceed or we proceed. I spoke to Mr Chote last Friday. I will come to our conversation in a moment. It deals directly with that matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

That is why I wrote to the Chancellor last October seeking to begin discussions and putting the draft clauses on the table. I have had a number of discussions with the head of the OBR, who has made exactly those points. He wants to know that the resources will be there and what the rules of engagement will be. He wants to know that this will be done properly. He wants to know, in particular, that the Government and the Treasury will engage in good faith with the process. Of course it is difficult, because so far the Chancellor has not been willing to engage with these discussions. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. However, I spoke to Mr Chote last Friday, and if we can reach agreement this week—by the end of June—he is content to proceed this year. If we are all in favour of the proposal in principle and enter into it in good faith, it can be done. Of course, if either side puts up impossible barriers in the discussions with the OBR, it will not happen. But I am up for it, and if the Chancellor was here, we could ask him whether he was too.

[David Rutley]

I understand what the shadow Chancellor is trying to say, but there are clear timing issues and a clear implementation risk. The OBR is an embryonic, independent body whose credibility we must maintain. We need to focus on the implementation risk.

[Ed Balls]

All I can say, once again, is that the head of the OBR is content to proceed. If the hon. Gentleman supports this reform, I shall share his frustration about the many months that have been wasted. I could have made this an issue of party political combat or criticism seven, eight or nine months ago, but I have said repeatedly at Treasury questions that I hope the Government will change their mind and engage. He is right that we will be timed out if we cannot make those agreements. If we can agree in the next week, we will have a full two months to work out the details. From my experience, I think that two months would be sufficient to agree on that if there is good faith on both sides.

[David Rutley]

If the shadow Chancellor is so enthusiastic, why has it taken him three and a half years to bring this proposal to the House in the first place?

[Ed Balls]

There are moments when the hon. Gentleman engages seriously in these issues, but then he reverts to the Whips’ brief and the kind of behaviour that we expect from others. The truth is that we have been trying to engage on this for nine months. We have been serious, but the Chancellor has been absent. That is the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I prefer to take notice of comments that are on the record, such as the following from Robert Chote. On 4 April 2014—[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor should listen. This is what the head of the OBR said:

“The Chancellor perfectly reasonably has said he doesn’t think this is the right time to do this… The reasons he has cited are it’s the first general election we’ve existed…you don’t want to throw the OBR as a relatively young body into a politically contested territory now.”

[David Rutley]

Having recruited teams—very sizeable teams—in the past, I know it takes time to recruit talent. These are not unskilled people—[Interruption.] No.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order.

[David Rutley]

May I ask the question, Madam Deputy Speaker?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman should make his intervention and ignore anything else, rather than trying to answer it all. A brief intervention will do, Mr Rutley.

[David Rutley]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your guidance.

I was making the point that it takes time to recruit skilled individuals, particularly in economic forecasting.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is entirely right; it will take time to recruit skilled members of staff to carry out the project that the Opposition say the OBR should be able to do within a matter of months.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robinson]

The most useful thing I can do for the hon. Gentleman and the House is to read out in full, to get it on the record, what the head of the OBR has said. In March, just a couple of months ago, he said:

“I think the key thing that you would need to do would be to ensure that by, say, the early summer”—

exactly where we are now—

“you were in a position”—

he is speaking to Members who are involved in the decision—

“where even if you did not have the full legislative framework for this sort of thing in place”—

I think we have that, largely—

“you would need to have, first, agreement in principle across the parties”,

which we are striving for, and it is only because the Government perceive it to be against their electoral interests that they are resisting it. It is the most blatant, obvious Government ploy that I have seen since—well, I will not say since when. He said

“that it was a good idea to do it and, secondly, fairly detailed agreement on what you might think of as the rules of the game: which parties should be involved”—

my right hon. Friend dealt with that—

“what scope of policies should you look at; what is the timetable; what would be the involvement of civil servants, and so on.”

The quotation continues:

“I think you would need to get that sort of thing in place in the early summer in order for us, for example, to be able to set out and recruit the necessary people over the course of the summer and have all that in place ready to be welcoming customers, so to speak, maybe after the party conferences in the autumn.”

There is the timetable, therefore, but Government Back Benchers are trying to deny it, and they are not playing their role at all. Why are they doing it? There is only one reason, and I shall come back to it in a moment.

[David Rutley]

rose—

[Mr Robinson]

I am not giving way.

I was quoting comments made by Robert Chote on 12 March this year. It is quite clear that this can be done. There is only one obstacle standing in the way: the Government do not want it to happen. It is not that they want it to happen but find it difficult; it is that they do not want it to happen.

Why do the Government not want it to happen? Let me read what the Chancellor said a couple of years ago when he first set out on this path:

“I propose to have discussions with Opposition party leaders about whether that is the appropriate thing to do”—

to have the parties’ election proposals vetted by the OBR—

“and it would be a legitimate matter for the House to debate”,

which we are doing today,

“and decide.”—[Official Report, 12 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 142.]

I say, with no disrespect to the two distinguished Ministers on the Treasury Bench, the Exchequer Secretary and the Financial Secretary, that it is a matter of great regret that the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary are absent because, having promised that, the Chancellor has refused to engage with my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor. He has refused to come to the House and debate this with us on the one occasion when we can decide on it, and decide on doing it in the run-up to the election, which is the appropriate time, as Robert Chote himself said: I am reciting his words not in the quotation that I read out, but in another one.

It is quite clear that this can be done, therefore; Robert Chote has said that it can be done. It is quite clear that the only art left to the Government is sophistry to try to create problems that just do not exist. If they can answer any one of the charges—any of the points made by Robert Chote or my right hon. Friend—then let us hear them, because I say, with great respect to the Financial Secretary who opened the debate, that she did not tackle any of that. She said, “Let me put on the record what we inherited.” This is not about that at all, and it is not about the fact we were not satisfied with the OBR in the early years. I was the Member who was most critical of its ability in those years.

The fact is that the OBR is established now, however, and it is clear from Robert Chote’s comments that he wants to do this. He believes he can do it and he thinks it would be good. It would be good for public debate, for transparency and for politics in this country, yet the Government are denying the public that right and that opportunity to submit parties’ proposals, which are always in the centre of the election debate, for scrutiny. They are denying the public that, and the public will ask why the Government are doing that and they will read between the lines and see that it is a blatant, deliberate attempt to hide from the public the fact that the Labour party’s proposals are coherent, costed and convincing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

No, I am trying to be disciplined because I have been in here too many times when people have taken loads of interventions and others have not had a chance to speak.

The Government have had plenty of time to have meetings about this issue over a long period of time. We have challenged Ministers about this, asking whether they have discussed it during any meetings. They have said in the past that they are committed to audits, so it is extraordinary that the Government cannot refer to any meeting where they have discussed this issue with the chairman of the OBR. That is an absolute disgrace; this is about having a better informed debate at a general election and they should be ashamed of themselves. Clearly, they have completely ignored this issue because they do not want to go through the process. As for the arguments about specialist skills, the chairman of the OBR is saying that he can deliver on this if we can get an agreement in principle now and if we can start to go through the details by the end of the summer. He is the first person we would go to if we were trying to set this up, so if he is saying—

[David Rutley]

rose—

[Clive Efford]

I will not give way, and I have explained why. If the chair of the OBR is saying, “I can do this if you make this decision now”, who is to question that? It should not be the Government, who have an ulterior motive in not having their economic policies and, more importantly, the misinformation they put out about their opponents scrutinised. If the Opposition’s budgets were examined, the Government would no longer be able to misinform people about those budgets. That is the truth of why the Government are ducking out of this. It is incredible for the Minister to stand there as an elected Member in this House and question the veracity of evidence that has been given to the Select Committee. The chairman of the OBR has been before the Select Committee and clearly indicated that he is favour of the proposal, and that has been questioned in this House. I find that absolutely incredible. It just shows us how much the Tory Government are wriggling on a hook to try to weasel out of this proposal.

The public will make up their own minds from a better informed position if we were to take this proposal forward. Only a Government who are up to no good could oppose the proposal. The time has come for this proposal to be taken forward, the OBR should be given the legal power to audit our plans, and the Government should get out of the way and allow it to happen.