Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Ed Balls Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is the morning after—the cold light of day—and the full reality of this Chancellor of the Exchequer’s fourth Budget is starting to sink in. What a huge disappointment it was; what another wasted opportunity. On growth, on borrowing and on living standards, this Chancellor’s plan has completely failed.

Families, pensioners and businesses are paying the price, but what did we get yesterday? A change of direction? Action to kick-start our flatlining economy? Real help now for families on middle and low incomes? Any recognition from the Chancellor that things have not worked out as he planned? No. All we got was more of the same failing policies. Tweeting, tinkering, but no change, of course. The Chancellor confirmed that he will still go ahead in two weeks’ time with a tax cut for millionaires. We had more of the same failing policies and a long hard road to nowhere from a downgraded Chancellor who looks out of touch and increasingly out of his depth. Surely Britain deserves better than that. What do we have to look forward to this morning?

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

What my constituents on the islands can look forward to next month is fuel duty at 18p a litre less than it would have been if the right hon. Gentleman’s Government had still been in power. Is he not delighted that this Government have reversed his party’s policy and reduced fuel duty by 18p a litre for my island constituents?

[Ed Balls]

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman fought the last election by saying that his constituents should vote Liberal Democrat to stop the Tory VAT bombshell. VAT has gone up, petrol is up as a result and his constituents will make their choice in two years’ time.

What do we have to look forward to this morning? Another painful, contorted and pathos-bathed Budget debate speech from the Business Secretary. I look across at him sitting on the Front Bench and cannot bear to read out once again all those pre-election quotes. You know the ones I mean, Mr Deputy Speaker—[Hon. Members: “Go on!”] No, I just cannot bear it. They were the ones in which he warned that the Chancellor’s austerity plan, his VAT rise and his rapid spending cuts would choke off the recovery and make the deficit worse. The Business Secretary knew that this plan would fail and he now knows that he is deeply implicated in its catastrophic economic failure, yet he still does not have the courage to stand up and speak out about it. Long, contorted and fudged essays in the New Statesman just will not do. No wonder he was completely ignored in yesterday’s Budget. It is a personal tragedy as well as a national tragedy, but we will hear from the Business Secretary shortly.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about economic failure. I have the UK annual debt figures going back a few years. When the right hon. Gentleman was in office, the UK debt was £347 billion. Before the crisis struck, it rose to £624 billion. After the crisis it ratcheted up another £200 billion. With this track record, why should the nation trust Labour with Britain’s finances ever again?

[Ed Balls]

This is the Conservative Member who stated just two months ago that

“the past 2 and a half years have set Britain on the right track.”

The economy flatlined, borrowing stalled and the national debt is rising year by year by year on his Chancellor’s watch. The right track? I can scarcely think what the wrong track would be.

This morning we heard the Deputy Prime Minister on “Call Clegg” attacking the Leader of the Opposition for repeating the same attacks in this year’s Budget response as he used last year. I went back to my opening speech of a year ago, the one following the Chancellor’s third Budget, the omnishambles Budget. We all remember that one, don’t we? This is what I said a year ago:

“The British economy is stagnating, unemployment is rising…the Government’s deficit reduction plans have gone wildly off track, middle and lower-income families and pensioners are facing rising…prices, rising energy bills and falling living standards—and what did the Chancellor do in his Budget yesterday? Did he admit that his economic plan has failed? Did he act to kick-start the stalled recovery?...No.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 957.]

That was a year ago, and the tragedy is that 12 months on the position is even worse. In the words of the great Yogi Berra, it really is déjà vu all over again. It is a groundhog day Budget from a failing and out-of-touch Chancellor.

Twelve months on, living standards are still falling. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that real wages adjusted for inflation will be a full 2.4% lower in 2015 than in 2010—worse off under the Tories. It is groundhog day too because 12 months on, the economy is still flatlining. As recently as the autumn statement, the Chancellor was expecting growth of 1.2% this year, but the OBR has now halved that forecast to just 0.6%—not the right track; the wrong track. At the time of the spending review in autumn 2010 the Chancellor was expecting growth by now of 5.3%. So far it has been just 0.7%, and the stagnation and flatlining continue.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I would be interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s explanation of why the OBR is forecasting 600,000 more jobs in 2013 than there were a year ago.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

Perhaps the hon. Lady should also study the book. The interesting thing is that the OBR is also forecasting that unemployment will rise, not fall. More jobs, unemployment rising—maybe there are more people in the country. Does she know what the OBR forecasts net migration to be in the next few years? Tens of thousands? No. Net migration of 140,000 every year. That is what is going on.

It is groundhog day too because, as a result of the present stagnation, the Chancellor’s fiscal plans are even more wildly out of control than they were a year ago. No wonder his fiscal credibility is in tatters. The Chancellor used to claim that the national debt would start to fall in 2015 from a peak of 69.7% of GDP. He now expects it to rise in 2015, to rise in 2016, to rise in 2017 and to hit a staggering not 69.7%, but 85.6% of GDP. And the reason the national debt is rising is that, as the OBR said yesterday, the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan has stalled. The deficit is now expected to be the same next year as it is this year and as it was last year. It is not a deficit reduction plan anymore. That is why the Chancellor is now set to borrow—[Interruption.] The Chancellor should listen to this. He is now set to borrow £245 billion more than he planned, vastly more than the borrowing he inherited from the Labour Government.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

While the vast army of PAs behind the shadow Chancellor search for a bullet point on Bedford, let me say that his criticisms are not falling very strongly, in part because his hands are dipped in red—the red ink of years of borrowing and debt. Does he not think that the arguments would be stronger if he moved to one side and gave his seat to the fresh-faced young man sitting next to him, the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills?

[Ed Balls]

The voters of Bedford might be disappointed to find out the truth: compared with a year ago, the Chancellor will borrow £29 billion more than he planned this year, £59 billion more next year, £73 billion more the year after and £77 billion more the year after that. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you want to know who the borrowing Chancellor is, it is him. Do you know what he managed to do yesterday in his Budget documentation? He fiddled around and managed to say that borrowing this year is lower than it was last year by £0.1 billion. We know why: as the OBR confirms, the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, when one would think they would be working on a plan for jobs and growth or reform of the banking system, have been scrabbling around and hacking away at spending in this year in a desperate attempt to try to get the borrowing down.

The detail is set out on page 13 of the OBR document. It shows that, compared even with the autumn statement, tax revenues are down this year by £5 billion but that since December the Chancellor has found a further so-called underspend of £3.4 billion, which he says is not like normal underspends. What does the OBR tell us about that so-called underspend. It states:

“It is very rare for the government to under-spend the departmental plans it has set out less than a year ago by such a wide margin...Our overall forecast of under-spending has a number of elements: money that the Treasury has agreed to allow departments to move into future years;…money that departments thought they would spend this year, but which they do not now expect to spend either this year or in the future; and payments (for example to some international institutions) that were due to be made late in the current financial year, but which are being delayed into 2013-14.”

The cheque is in the post, but it will not arrive until after 1 April in order to massage the figures. Who does the OBR say has been hardest hit? The answer is the national health service, which has been cut by over £2 billion this year. At the same time the NHS is losing more than 5,000 nurses, the Treasury scrabbles around to try to save the Chancellor’s face.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Yesterday I brought the CEO of a significant medium-sized manufacturer in Gloucester to listen to the Budget statement and the Opposition’s response. He commented afterwards:

“I thought the Government’s commitment to helping business was exactly what is needed for growth and jobs, and I continue to be dismayed that the Opposition remains so theatrical, playing for headlines only, which cannot help any of us.”

Is not it time the shadow Chancellor gave us less theatre and more substance on what he would do to help businesses and growth?

[Ed Balls]

Falling living standards for families in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, rising child poverty and families in work seeing their tax credits cut—that is not theatre; that is the real world. As for the national insurance cut for small businesses, that is point 5 of Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth. That is the reality.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

Talking about theatre and the movement of money between financial years, is it not interesting that hospitals in Shropshire have been cancelling operations? One of the chief nurses says that is because of funding cuts in the NHS. I wonder whether it is because of the Chancellor’s fiddle.

[Ed Balls]

The OBR document is very interesting. It sets out the unusual underspend Department by Department. I do not think that we have yet heard the full truth about what has been going on in the Treasury: the pressure applied in one year to cut spending or to move it to the next year just to fiddle the borrowing figures. I think that we will discover the truth in the coming weeks. For a Government who attack businesses and make late payments to small business, they are the late payment Government.

Has the Chancellor learned nothing over the past 12 months? He used to say that he was sticking to his plan in order to secure the recovery, but then we had the double-dip recession. He used to say that he was sticking to his plan to get the deficit down, but his spending cuts and tax rises have choked off the recovery. As the OBR revealed yesterday, the deficit was basically unchanged last year and will remain unchanged this year and next. Then all he could say was that he had to stick to his plan in order to keep his treasured triple A credit rating, but he has even lost that. The only reason he will not now change course is to avoid his own political humiliation, and that is no reason to stick to a failing plan.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman alleges that the Government have increased the deficit. I have checked the figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the OBR. Will he confirm that when the Government came to power the deficit was 11.2% of GDP and that it is now 7.4%? Is that a rise?

[Ed Balls]

The Government inherited a deficit reduction plan from the previous Government, but the Chancellor is wildly off track from our plan, which he used to call irresponsible. He is borrowing pretty much a quarter of a trillion pounds more. He said that he would get the deficit down, but the deficit reduction plan has stalled.

I have urged the Chancellor to change course, as in recent months have the International Monetary Fund, The Economist, the Mayor of London, the Business Secretary and the Home Secretary. They have all cast doubt on his plan. But yesterday we got more of the same. How did he describe the Budget? He described it as a “steady-as-she-goes Budget.” Steady as she goes? What kind of ship does he think he is on: the Titanic; the Mary Celeste?

There were some welcome measures. We have consistently called for a tax break for small firms taking on extra workers. The Government are now set to introduce a similar scheme, three years after the shadow Business Secretary and I urged them to. That is a welcome step forward. The Chancellor has finally joined Twitter, five years after I did. Maybe he will find out that his plan is going to fail five years after I worked it out, although by then he will be on the Opposition side of the House.

Yesterday there was no proper plan to kick-start our economy, no bank bonus tax to fund a youth jobs guarantee, no real action to get lending going to small firms, no proper investment in affordable homes and no return of the 10p starting rate to help millions of people, paid for by a mansions tax. Despite the welcome small change of 1p off a pint of beer—buy 320 pints and get one free, which might even be too much for the Foreign Secretary—and even after the increase in the personal allowance, an important point for the Liberal Democrats, families will still be worse off next year compared with this year because of the Chancellor’s tax and benefit changes.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

With all the voodoo economics and fiddles that have now been exposed, is not the Treasury exposed as the most disreputable massage parlour in Britain?

[Ed Balls]

I think it is a little unfair to tease this Chancellor about what goes on late at night in massage parlours. Perhaps he will correct me and tell me that it was not a massage parlour. I will take an intervention if he would like to clarify it; I cannot remember that chapter in the biography.

According to House of Commons Library figures, a one-earner family—[Interruption.] The Chancellor should listen to the reality of his plans and their impact on hard-working families in our country. According to the Library, a one-earner family on £20,000 a year with two children will be £381 a year worse off in 2013 compared with 2010, even with the personal allowance, because that is outweighed by the hit to tax credits for a working family. This is without taking into account the rise in VAT. By 2015, that family on £20,000 will be £600 a year worse off.

It is not just a case of being worse off under the Tories, but worse off under the Liberal Democrats too. In 16 days’ time, as the Chancellor, with the support of the Business Secretary, rams through the granny tax, the strivers tax and the bedroom tax, he is pressing ahead with a £3 billion tax cut for the very richest people in our country. In two weeks’ time, 13,000 millionaires will get an average tax cut of £100,000 each. Millions are paying more while millionaires get a tax cut.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor is on record as saying that his solution is that we should be borrowing more now. How much more would he borrow on top of what the Chancellor is already borrowing?

[Ed Balls]

I will quote the Business Secretary. Asked on the “Today” programme, “Won’t that mean more borrowing?”, he replied, “But we are borrowing more.” The Government are borrowing more—it is all here in the OBR document. If they had listened to our plan two years ago, the borrowing would be coming down, and it is not.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will take some more interventions if Members want. Let us have the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) again.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He spoke about a deficit reduction plan. What year was he referring to? Was it 2001-02, when the deficit was £0.8 billion, or was it any one of the years leading up to the last year that Labour was in government, when it was a staggering £158 billion? Under the previous Government, the deficit increased in every single year after 2001. Will he tell me in which year his deficit was supposed to kick in?

[Ed Balls]

I do not want to have to give the hon. Gentleman an economics lesson, although given that he thinks we are on the right track, perhaps he needs one. The Chancellor’s fiscal rule is to balance the current structural budget, excluding investment—[Interruption.] Don’t be so silly. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Can we calm down? Shouting from sedentary positions does not help the debate.

[Ed Balls]

The economy has flatlined and the national debt is rising year on year, and the hon. Gentleman does not want to know the truth.

Not only is the Chancellor pressing ahead with a tax cut for millionaires; it now seems that his mortgage scheme announced yesterday will help people, no matter how high their income, to buy a subsidised second home worth up to £600,000. From what I have seen so far, the Government are basically saying, “If you’ve got a spare room in a social home you’ll pay the bedroom tax, but if you want a spare home and you can afford it, we’ll help you to buy one.” Are the Government really going to allow millionaires, who will get a tax cut averaging £100,000 in two weeks’ time, to get a taxpayer guarantee if they use that money as a deposit on a house, a second home, or even a buy-to-let house? That is not just tax cuts for millionaires; it is subsidised mortgages for millionaires—or should I say a spare homes subsidy? I will take an intervention if the Chancellor wants to clear up the absolute confusion and chaos over this policy. Surely people struggling to get a mortgage—those who want to get their first home—should be the priority for help, not the small number who can potentially afford to buy a second home or a buy-to-let home. We will solve the housing crisis and help first-time buyers only if we finally build the new affordable homes that we said should be built but which he ignored in this Budget.

This is more of the same from a Chancellor who does not even understand the Budget he has announced, as we saw a year ago. I ask him again—is the taxpayer subsidy available for second homes to people with incomes over £100,000 or for buy-to-let properties? Yes or no? If he does not clear it up, the confusion and chaos will continue. Does he want clarify it? Pasties, caravans, churches, skips—and now subsidised second homes for millionaires. It is not “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”; it is “Who Wants To Help A Millionaire?” It is not “phone a friend”; it is “cut taxes for your friends.” As for “ask the audience”, he must be hoping that he does not have to ask the electorate any time soon—certainly not after the past 12 months.

What a 12 months it has been for this Chancellor! The omnishambles Budget, the double-dip recession, booed at the Paralympics, forced to upgrade on the train, downgraded by Moody’s, his fascinating biography—and now his colleagues are even speculating that he might have to be replaced by the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary, or even the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood). A year ago they feted him as the next leader of the Tory party; now, according to the Tories, they are touting him as our next man in Brussels. It used to be Calamity Clegg they were sending off to the Commission; now it is Calamity George. Well, we do know he likes a bit of “Whip crack-away, whip crack-away, whip crack-away.” [Interruption.] Are you suggesting that I do not sing it, Mr Deputy Speaker?

A few weeks ago, the Chancellor reportedly told his colleagues at a Cabinet meeting that if they did not make a decision that day they would have to do so after 2015, sitting round the shadow Cabinet table. That is going to be the one forecast that he actually gets right.

[Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

This is all very amusing, but not very serious. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in his own constituency over the past 12 months unemployment has fallen by 2.5% and youth unemployment has fallen by 12.5%? Why is he complaining about higher borrowing and at the same time advocating higher borrowing? Is it not right that the Chancellor is letting the automatic stabilisers kick in?

[Ed Balls]

The problem with what the Chancellor is doing this year—cutting in-year spending—is that it is the opposite of the automatic stabilisers. He is cutting spending and the OBR says that it is having a direct impact on economic growth. I sympathise with everybody who loses their job, including the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb). In my constituency unemployment has come down, but working families are worse off because of cuts to tax credits, the bedroom tax and cuts to child care. The £700 million-a-year tax break for new child care is no compensation for the £7 billion a year cut in support for families.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that inequality in income has dropped significantly since May 2010?

[Ed Balls]

I think the hon. Lady may find that that is before the millionaires’ tax cut kicks in in 14 days’ time.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked whether I am being serious. I am being deadly serious about the failure of this Government’s economic plan. They are failing on growth and on borrowing, and living standards are falling as families and businesses pay the price. I warned the Chancellor two and a half years ago that his plan could not work and that, given that a global hurricane was brewing, it was the wrong time to rip out the foundations of our own house. I told him that monetary policy in a situation akin to that of Japan in the 1990s or of the world in the 1930s could not do the trick to restore growth. I warned him that attempting to have the biggest tax rises and fastest spending cuts in our post-war history, and probably beyond, would backfire and choke off recovery rather than support it.

The Under-Secretary of State for Skills, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) is the Chancellor’s former adviser and he is now a member of the Business Secretary’s ministerial team. He wrote an article in The Times in the autumn of 2010 in which he said—this is the Chancellor’s former adviser—that faster deficit reduction would lead to stronger growth. He said, as the Chancellor has also argued, that this was an example of expansionary fiscal contraction, but fiscal contraction has not been expansionary—it choked off the recovery. If the Chancellor was relying on advisers like the hon. Gentleman, it is no wonder that he got into such trouble.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor has made great fun of tax changes and other issues relating to growth. Does he welcome the Government measure that means that next month 36,270 working people in his own constituency will get a tax cut?

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman needs to look at the figures and understand the impact on working families in his constituency. The problem with his Chancellor is that he gives with one hand and takes a lot more with the other. A one-earner family on £20,000 and with two children are worse off, even with the personal allowance, by £380 a year because of the cuts to tax credits. Working families are losing out. The Chancellor tried to divide the country into strivers versus shirkers, but we do not hear that any more because it turned out that his shirkers were the working people of this country.

The real tragedy for this Chancellor is that he is set to join a long line of past Chancellors. Philip Snowden, Norman Lamont and now George Osborne—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Do not refer to Members by name.

[Ed Balls]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Philip Snowden, Lord Lamont and now Chancellor Osborne—[Interruption.] It was not the Lamont name that I got wrong, was it, Mr Deputy Speaker? Philip Snowden, Lord Lamont and now this Chancellor have said, “I will stick to the plan.” Those past Chancellors ignored all the warnings from those who said that the plan would not work. They boasted, “If the medicine’s not hurting, it’s not working,” and ploughed on and on as things got worse and worse, and their careers ended in disaster as their failed policy finally consumed them.

Is that not the truth? This Chancellor is an historian who does not know his history and he does not know his economics, either. He is completely out of his depth—business, the country, his Back Benchers and Cabinet colleagues and the Business Secretary all know it and, in his heart of hearts, I think the Chancellor knows it, too. He was the wrong man for the job at this vital time. He is running out of excuses, he has run out of answers and he is running out of road.

We needed a Budget for growth, jobs and fairness, but we got more of the same. There is no plan for growth, just tax cuts for the rich while everyone else pays the price. This is more of the same failing plan from a downgraded Chancellor—not steady as she goes, but sinking like a stone.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

As I said a few moments ago, there are two schemes. The first, which is the development of a scheme that is already operating, most emphatically does not apply to second homes. The major mortgage guarantee scheme is complex and the Chancellor will consult on how to draw the boundaries around eligible mortgages.

[Ed Balls]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vince Cable]

Let me just finish this point.

[Ed Balls]

Will he give way?

[Vince Cable]

I will in a moment. Let me just deal with the question of the millionaires who benefit. I remember the 13 years that I spent on the Opposition Benches, asking about taxes. Let us remember the situation. We had a 40p top tax rate, we had an 18% capital gains tax, which was widely used for tax avoidance in the private equity industry and elsewhere, and non-dom tax reliefs were completely uncapped. When we challenged that situation, we were told repeatedly by this shadow Chancellor and others, “No, you can’t do that. You’ll frighten away all the bankers who are generating wealth in the City of London.”

Of course we need a more equitable tax system. That is why the Liberal Democrats continue to argue for a mansion tax. But we have a higher rate of income tax at the top than prevailed in any year of the Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

The Business Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and a student of these matters, and he cares a lot about how the economy works. Can he tell us, because he will have been part of the discussions, whether the new mortgage scheme applies to second homes and buy-to-let. Yes or no? He is the Business Secretary; can he answer the question?

[Vince Cable]

The scheme has not yet been designed in detail. It was typical of the Labour party that it frequently launched into half-baked schemes without thinking about the detail. This is a major change and it will be planned carefully.

[Ed Balls]

To be absolutely clear, in two weeks’ time millionaires are getting an income tax cut and the new scheme that was introduced yesterday could allow them to use that tax cut to get a taxpayer subsidy for a second home or a buy-to-let, but the Business Secretary cannot tell us—yes or no—whether that will be the case. Is that not an absolute shambles? Is it not set to be totally unfair? It is a spare home subsidy.

[Vince Cable]

The right hon. Gentleman does not know, and I do not yet know, what the final outcome of this massive scheme will be. To be lectured with righteous indignation by the people who created a massive property bubble that destroyed this country’s economy and wiped out enormous gains in people’s living standards is the most gross hypocrisy.

Let me turn to some of the other issues that the shadow Chancellor raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I do not understand why the Opposition should be hostile to work experience. All our evidence suggests that people who enjoy work experience go on to stable employment. It is an extraordinary state of denial when we have a successful process of job creation that the Opposition do not want to acknowledge exists.

[Ed Balls]

To clear up the Business Secretary’s confusion a few moments ago—I am not sure whether he or the Chancellor have seen this document, but it might be helpful to them—the Treasury has published a document, “Help to Buy: mortgage guarantee”, which makes it clear that the scheme does not apply to buy-to-let properties. A person cannot take out a mortgage for a buy-to-let property; it must be residential. As far as we can see from the document, however, the scheme absolutely does allow second homes. It is a spare homes subsidy. I do not know whether the Business Secretary has seen the document, but perhaps he would like to comment.

[Vince Cable]

I am glad the right hon. Gentleman felt able to withdraw his earlier allegation that this was about buy-to-let mortgages.

[Ed Balls]

For absolute clarity, I asked the Chancellor and the Business Secretary whether the scheme applied to buy-to-let properties, and whether it would allow second homes. Neither of them knew. The Business Secretary said that it had not been decided, but in fact the document has been published and states that the scheme does not apply to buy-to-let properties, but it does allow second homes. The accusation stands. Is that true? It is not in the document; are they going to amend it?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

Is it in the document or not?

[Ed Balls]

It is not in the document—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Please make the intervention briefly.

[Ed Balls]

The document is very clear. Buy-to-let is ruled out but second homes are allowed. That is a fact.

[Vince Cable]

I think the shadow Chancellor is digging himself into a certain amount of trouble. He refers to a document as fact, but it is actually a consultation document. Rather more sensibly, the shadow Business Secretary yesterday applauded the new housing initiatives. We will proceed with the consultation, and if the shadow Chancellor has any technical criticisms of the tenure arrangements, he can make them in the consultation process and we will listen constructively.