Amendment of the Law
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to open today’s Budget debate. Less than 24 hours after the Budget statement, the truth is becoming clear. For all the Chancellor’s hubris, yesterday’s Budget has changed nothing for working people in our country. He spent an hour telling people that they have never had it so good, but working people are still, on average, £1,600 a year worse off after five years of the Tories. Our national health service is still in crisis, but he had nothing to say about the NHS.
The Chancellor started the day with plans for extreme spending cuts, and he ended the day with plans for extreme spending cuts: cuts to spending even bigger in the three years after the election than those of the past five years; deep cuts that go way beyond balancing the books; and deep cuts that can be delivered only by another Tory rise in VAT or by putting our NHS at risk. It was a Tory Budget from a Tory Chancellor who gives with one hand and takes much more with the other—an out-of-touch Budget that made twice as many references to Agincourt as it did to our NHS.
I will examine all the Chancellor’s claims and set out the truth behind the spin and hubris, but first I want to set him straight on one issue. I applaud the £1 million he announced to commemorate the battle of Agincourt, but before he goes any further with those plans I have to correct his rather shaky understanding of the battle. I know he has a degree in history, and that I have a mere A-level in mediaeval history, but I suggest he stick to the period he knows. For a start, the Chancellor should be aware that not a single Scottish soldier fought on the French side at Agincourt. Indeed, if he reads Shakespeare’s version of the battle, he will see that there were representatives of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, all fighting as captains in King Henry’s army.
The story of Agincourt was one of an arrogant and complacent king who, rather than fight the battle himself, sent his weak and ineffective right-hand man to defend an impossible situation. He got his tactics wrong, he lost control of the situation, and he became bogged down in mud. He was no match for the stout yeomen on the other side. They may have lacked money, horses and noble blood, but they outfought their opponents on the battlefield. We stout yeomen will be happy to join in the commemorations of Agincourt. As fans of hand gestures, if anyone can think of any famous hand gestures traditionally associated with Agincourt, we will be happy to use them towards the Chancellor again and again at every stage of this debate.
It was fitting that the Chancellor chose to invoke Shakespeare in his Budget speech. He has, after all, been a poor player these last five years. Yesterday he strutted and fretted his final hour upon this stage, and after May he will be heard no more. Yesterday was a Budget full of sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing.
Julian Smith
On the subject of sound and fury, will the shadow Chancellor clarify what he would do to stick to the commitments he made when he signed up to the charter for budget responsibility only a few weeks ago?
Ed Balls
People say that empty vessels make the loudest noise. I will set out clearly our approach to deficit reduction, but before I do let us go back to the ineffective right-hand man, who apparently is now standing in front of Downing street holding a yellow Budget box—less reality, more “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. What a shambles! Yesterday we had the Budget, today we had the farce of the alternative Budget from the Chief Secretary, the Liberal Democrats’ new economic spokesman, and now, with the Business Secretary shortly to come to the Dispatch Box, I presume we are to get the alternative alternative Budget from the man the Chief Secretary displaced from the job.
One has to feel sorry for the Business Secretary. He lost a job and still has to turn up to give the speech, sitting there beside one of his Treasury nemeses, with the other outside Downing street. Another Shakespeare quote comes to mind:
“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
How true. Let us not forget that the Business Secretary and the Chief Secretary served with the Chancellor in the Cabinet for five years. Together all three of them voted to put up VAT. The Liberal Democrats voted with the Tories to raise tuition fees to £9,000. They voted with the Tories for the hated and iniquitous bedroom tax. The fault is not in their stars, but in themselves, and the British people will not let them forget it.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
Will this ploy of much ado about nothing delivered in a tempest form continue for the whole of the right hon. Gentleman’s soliloquy, or will he come to some points of import shortly?
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
“Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep”—
When is the right hon. Gentleman going to get on with it?
Ed Balls
I don’t know. That was all Greek to me.
Let us stop wasting time with the ridiculous Liberal Democrats and return to the Chancellor’s Budget. The Chancellor claimed, first, that working people are better off than they were in 2010. How out of touch can you get? No wonder Conservative Back Benchers were so muted in the House of Commons yesterday. They know, as we know, the reality of people’s lives. Unlike the Chancellor, they hear it on the doorstep. They know that with wage growth stagnant over the past few years, energy bills rising, and 1.8 million zero-hours contracts, when the Chancellor says there is a recovery, most people say, “Where is the recovery for me? It is not a recovery for me, our family and our community.”
The Chancellor tried to invent a new measure of living standards yesterday. It was a flawed measure because it includes income to universities and charities, but, compared with the first quarter of 2010, in the first quarter of 2015 the Chancellor’s measure has not gone up; it has gone down. Even on his own measure, people are worse off than they were in 2010. We know from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation that on more sensible measures confirmed by the IFS two weeks ago, household incomes are down compared with 2010, and wages after inflation are down by more than £1,600 a year since 2010. This is the first Parliament since the early 1920s when the average person in work will be worse off at the end of the Parliament than they were at the beginning. In answer to the famous Reagan question, “Are you better off than you were five years ago?”, the answer is a resounding no.
We welcome the action to help savers and increase thresholds, but where was the action to help working people? Why did the Chancellor not announce an ambition to raise the national minimum wage to £8 an hour? Why did he not commit to expanding free child care for working parents to 25 hours? Why not cut business rates for small companies? Why not ban exploitative zero-hours contracts? Why not repeat the bank bonus tax and have a compulsory starter job for our young people? Why not scrap his absurd married couples allowance, which he barely mentioned yesterday, because it goes to only a third of married couples, and instead use the money to cut the taxes of working people? That is what he should have done. That is what a Labour Budget will deliver.
The Chancellor’s second claim is that he is rebalancing the economy. We all remember his claim of
“a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers”—[Official Report, 22 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]
but the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said yesterday that growth is still lower than was forecast in 2010. Growth is set to be slower this year and next year than last year. The OBR confirmed that the Chancellor is on course to miss his 2010 target to double exports to £1 trillion—off course by more than £600 billion, and business investment has been revised down this year. The OBR says that “the growth of potential productivity per hour remains below its historical average throughout the forecast” and that “actual hourly productivity growth has again been weaker than expected”. The only thing it has revised up is its forecast for net migration.
Why did the Chancellor not act to deal with the housing crisis by committing to build 200,000 more homes a year by 2020? Why did he not establish a proper British investment bank for small and medium-sized businesses? Why did he not take up our idea, now the subject of consensus across our country, and establish an independent national infrastructure commission to stop long-term decisions being kicked into the long grass? Why did he not go further and devolve powers, including the uplift on business rates, to all areas in our country, rather than just to some? Why did he not commit to securing Britain’s place in a reformed European Union?
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I would not want the right hon. Gentleman to forget to mention the deficit, so can we get back to that? It is quite important. When we came to power, following the Labour Government, the annual budget deficit was £141 billion a year. It is now £93 billion a year—still far too much. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain his plans for matching our plans to keep that budget deficit under control and preferably get rid of it by 2020?
Ed Balls
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. I know from reading Hansard that he said to the House a year ago that
“for all the huff and puff, when it comes to what it actually puts into and takes out of the economy, the Budget represents a 0.3% change . . . That is somewhat worrying when we consider the very big challenge we face on deficit reduction”.—[Official Report, 20 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 993.]
I share his concerns about the Chancellor’s track record, and I am going to set out our alternatives in a moment.
Before I do that, let us go back to the Chancellor’s claims yesterday. He seems to have been telling the media this morning that he has retreated from his commitment to austerity, but the OBR’s document sets out the truth. Its verdict on the Budget is that it represents
“a much sharper squeeze on real spending in 2016-17 and 2017-18 than anything seen over the past five years.”
It goes on to give the details on page 130, where it sets out in graphical form the cuts in public spending that we shall see from the Chancellor. Paragraph 4.108 states:
“One implication of the Government’s spending policy assumptions is a sharp acceleration in the pace of implied real cuts to day-to-day spending on public services and administration in 2016-17”.
I am going to set out a better way to do this, but first I will highlight what the Chancellor is actually doing. The reason he has to set out such deep cuts to public spending—deeper in the next Parliament than in this Parliament—is that, as the OBR confirms, and as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) knows very well, in this Parliament he has failed to balance the books. Yesterday’s numbers confirm, according to the OBR, that the Government are borrowing £200 billion more than they planned in 2010. The deficit is set to be not balanced, but £75 billion. For all this Chancellor’s boasts about national debt falling, public net debt in 2015-16 is £217 billion higher than he was forecasting in 2010. He now claims that the national debt is going to be falling. That is based on his forecasts of short-term, one-off money coming in from the sale of bank shares. In 2014-15, he was planning on the national debt falling from 69.4% to 67.4%. In fact, his forecast yesterday has the national debt in 2015 at 80.4%, falling to 80.2%. It takes some hubris for a Chancellor to borrow over £200 billion more and then claim he has succeeded. That is the reality, and we know why. As the OBR confirmed yesterday, income tax and national insurance receipts have come in short of the 2010 forecasts by £97 billion cumulatively across the Parliament.
The result is the deeper spending cuts that the Chancellor had to set out yesterday. The IFS said back in the autumn that these were colossal cuts; they are still colossal cuts. The OBR said in the autumn that this would take spending on day-to-day public services back to the level of the 1930s. The Treasury tried to tell us yesterday that that was no longer the case. Its special advisers tweeted that they are only the deepest cuts since 1964. It comes to something when they have to boast that we are cutting our public spending to a level not seen for 50 years. In fact, the small print of the OBR tables reveals that 2018 spending, on the historical comparative measure that the OBR uses—day-to-day spending on public services—falls to its lowest level since not 1964 but 1938.
The Chancellor claimed that he had changed the position, but he has confirmed the reality—even deeper cuts in the next three years than in the past five years. That is the truth. These are, in my view, cuts that will be impossible for our police services, our defence and armed forces and our social care to bear. Even this Chancellor cannot make this scale of cuts to our armed forces, our police forces or our social care, so he is going to have to end up doing what he always has to do—raise VAT and cut the NHS. That is the reality.
The Chancellor wants us to believe that this does not have to happen. He says that he can instead cut welfare and tackle tax avoidance. The problem is that his record on both is miserable. He is promising £12 billion more cuts to welfare, but he cannot tell us where they are going to come from. We know he has brought in the bedroom tax, but he cannot tell us what else he has in store. In this Parliament, he has overspent on his welfare plans by £25 billion.
Apparently the Chancellor is now going to crack down on tax avoidance. This is the Chancellor who has seen the tax gap—uncollected tax—rise by £3 billion. This is the Chancellor who, with the Prime Minister, appointed Lord Green—who, it turns out, had presided over HSBC’s industrial-scale tax avoidance. Despite repeated questioning, the Chancellor still cannot tell us whether he actually talked to Lord Green about tax avoidance. Why will he not, between now and the general election, come clean and tell us whether he had conversations with Lord Green about tax avoidance? No wonder the Chancellor did not come to Treasury questions a couple of weeks ago. No wonder he does not want a head-to-head debate. We now know why. One member of the Tory Cabinet does not want to talk about Michael Green, and another member of the Tory Cabinet does not want to talk about Lord Green. One is a deluded fantasist who has great problems with the truth, and the other is the chairman of the Conservative party. To be fair, only the chairman of the Conservative party changed his name—although, then again, perhaps the Chancellor did too.
This is the truth: the Chancellor promised to make people better off, and they are worse off. He promised to balance the books in this Parliament; that pledge lies in tatters. He promised, “We’re all in this together”, and then cut taxes for millionaires. Now he is forced to confirm extreme and risky cuts to public spending in the next Parliament, bigger than in this Parliament.
We need a fairer, more balanced approach to the deficit and living standards. That is why Labour is now the only centre-ground party in British politics. We will cut the deficit every year and balance the books, with a surplus on the current budget and the national debt falling, as soon as possible in the next Parliament. Unlike the Conservatives, we have no unfunded commitments on welfare or on taxes. We were the party that wanted the independent OBR to audit all our manifestos—blocked by this Chancellor.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I am glad that my right hon. Friend mentions the OBR. I do not know whether he has had a chance to look at the online version of the Liberal Democrats’ document “An alternative fiscal path beyond 2016-17”, table 2.A of which is entitled, “Scenario input assumptions”. Can he guess who the source is? It is not the OBR, it is not the IFS: it is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Ed Balls
We know from the autumn statement that the OBR confirmed that the scale of these spending cuts was agreed by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary, and the same thing is clear about this Budget document. The OBR says:
“This profile is driven by a medium-term fiscal assumption that the Treasury has confirmed ‘represents the Government’s agreed position for Budget 2015’ and that was ‘discussed by the Quad and agreed by both parties in the Coalition.’”
The Liberal Democrats now come along and say that they were not really in favour of the bedroom tax, and not really in favour of these fiscal plans, but we know the truth. That is why we need a fairer and more balanced approach.
We will have sensible spending cuts in non-protected areas. We will cut winter fuel payments for the richest 5% of pensioners. We will cap child benefit at 1% for two years. The shadow Chief Secretary has been setting out in our zero-based review of every pound spent by Government cuts from rooting out waste and inefficiency in policing, in local government, in defence, and in schools. We are going to get rid of the police and crime commissioner elections. We are going to get rid of the free schools. We are going to stop the overpayment of housing benefit. We are going to deal with the issue of—[Interruption.] I meant new free schools. The shadow Chief Secretary has set out ways in which we can make those sensible cuts in non-protected areas.
We will also make fairer choices. We will reverse—[Interruption.] If the Chancellor wants to intervene, I will happily give way.
Ed Balls
I am sorry, but I thought the Chancellor was about to stand up and tell us whether he talked to Lord Green about tax avoidance. He knows very well that our policy is to not have any more new free schools, and our £230 million saving is based on that.
We will make fairer choices, reversing this Government’s £3 billion a year tax cut—[Interruption.] Does the Chancellor want to intervene? The fact is that he cannot give us a yes or no answer about whether he talked to Lord Green about tax avoidance.
We will reverse this Government’s £3 billion a year top-rate tax cut for the 1% earning more than £150,000. We will introduce a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2 million, to help save and transform our national health service.
Our plan will deliver the rise in living standards and stronger growth needed to balance the books. It is a better plan for more good jobs and more balanced growth, because we know that if we can get our economy not to slow down, but to keep growing 0.5% a year faster than forecast, Government borrowing would be more than £32 billion lower in the next Parliament.
After this Budget, it is clear that Britain needs a better plan, not a Budget flop from a Chancellor whose failing plan is not working for working people. The choice is now clear: a tough but balanced and fair plan to deliver rising living standards, save the NHS and get the deficit down with Labour, or an extreme and risky plan under the Tories for bigger spending cuts in the next four years than the past five, which would cause huge damage to our public services and put our NHS at risk.
If they ever write a play about this Chancellor, it will be a tragedy of hubris, fantasy and thwarted ambition: the ruthless prince whose desire to be king has blinded him to reality and made him reach too far. Nothing will better reflect his time in office than the leaving of it: a final Budget built on sand and smoke—a Budget signifying nothing. He has run out of lines, and it is time he left the stage.
Vince Cable
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I thought it might be useful to take one element of the Opposition’s policies to see how utterly incoherent it is. I want to home in on the particular issue of how they would fund a reduction in tuition fees. To be frank, this is a tricky subject for all parties. All parties, including the Labour party, have gone back on their commitments. My party has done so, and I know that the Conservatives had some embarrassment in 2005. I would have thought that common sense suggested we ought to draw a line under this episode. I know from the feedback I get from the shadow Cabinet that the shadow Chancellor has been a voice of sanity in this debate, but his leader has not listened to him. Clearly, I am parti pris on this matter, but let me read a comment made yesterday by a man who describes himself as having been
“responsible for delivery in Downing Street under Tony Blair”.
I am not sure that I would want that on my CV, but he is very happy about it. Referring specifically to this proposal, he said:
“The result would be to spend almost £3bn to subsidise high earners of the future. The present system is attracting more students than ever, especially from low-income families. In 2004, before fees were introduced”—
by the previous Government—
“14 per cent of the lowest socio-economic fifth…went to university; last year 21 per cent did. Labour’s proposal therefore offers not ‘more for less’ but ‘less for more’.”
The position is actually worse than that, because we do not understand how it will all be paid for. A £2.6 billion gap needs to be filled to pay for the cap. The original idea was that there would be some kind of granny tax, with grannies paying extra into their pensions. That comes down to the proposal about the pension pot. The proposals that the Chancellor made yesterday diminished considerably the resource available from that source, so where will the money come from? Even if the Labour party can identify where the money will come from, how can it guarantee to universities that the money will get from the grannies to the Treasury to the universities? How exactly will that be sustained in the years ahead?
This is not just a debating point; these issues really matter. The feedback that we are getting from universities is that they have stopped investing because there is a political risk—although it may not be high—of a Labour Government. Universities have stopped investing and are having to fall back on their reserves. Some universities, such as Cambridge, have said that if this policy were to happen, they would drastically reduce the number of students they admitted and cut back on their supervision. The quality of education would suffer.
It requires a particular kind of genius to dream up a proposal of such transcendental stupidity. I was going to ask the person responsible to stand up and tell us what it is all about, but the shadow universities Minister is not here. He is the same guy who left the note saying that there was no money left. What he is now proposing is that universities should experience precisely the same treatment.
Vince Cable
We did not promise to abolish the VAT bombshell. We did make the promise on tuition fees and that was a mistake. We have regretted it and apologised for it.
I just wish that the Labour party would have the same wisdom, because if it ever gets into office, it will go down this road and it will do severe damage to the budget and to universities. The worst thing about this policy is that the primary beneficiaries will be the investment bankers of the future. The shadow Chancellor has been going around complaining about millionaires’ tax cuts. What he is now advocating is a millionaires’ debt-relief scheme.
Vince Cable
I was hoping that we would have an intervention from the Scottish nationalists, because they illustrate better than anybody else the stupidity of this policy. There have not been tuition fees in Scotland and the quality of university education is declining because there is less resource. The worst thing of all in Scotland is that in order to maintain this policy, they have raided the budgets of further education colleges, taking money from working-class children in Scotland to finance middle-class undergraduates. That is a very retrograde policy. If anybody wants to see where Labour’s policy will lead, they should indeed go to Scotland.
Let me turn to the bigger question of inequality, because many of the accusations that are made by the Opposition relate to the question of whether we have become a more unequal society. It is certainly true that if we talk about the top 1%, there is extreme wealth. Some of it—that created by entrepreneurs and risk takers—is totally understandable in a free-enterprise society, but much of it is not. That problem is shared across the world. It is true of the top 1% in social democratic Scandinavia and in communist China. These people can move, and they can move in and out of our country. It is to the credit of the Chancellor that he was able to say yesterday that the share of income tax that is paid by the top 1% has risen under this Government from 25% to 27%.
Of course, there is one way in which the ultra-rich in society can be made to pay that they cannot run away from, and that is by targeting high-value property. That is one area where my party has common ground with the Labour party.
If we take the wider issue of income distribution and the effects of austerity, the evidence is clear. People in the top 10% or 20% have contributed more than average in cash or percentage terms to the austerity programme and deficit reduction. For an objective measure of inequality, we should look to bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is totally independent and has been a thorn in the side of successive Governments. It has done an analysis of income inequality before and after this Government, looking at the basic Gini coefficient, and found that inequality in income is lower today than in 2007-08. If one digs into the figures a little further, one finds that the numbers depend on which consumer index is applied. However, even if one applies different consumer indices, the IFS analysis shows that, at the very worst, income inequality is no worse under this Government than it was under the Labour Government. I hope that when we hear the righteous indignation in future, the basic facts about this matter will be properly understood.
Ed Balls
Will the Business Secretary confirm that because of measures such as the bedroom tax and what has happened to tax credits—things that have happened only because of Liberal Democrat votes—the quintile that has made the second biggest contribution is the poorest 20% of families in our country? Does he feel proud of that?
Vince Cable
It depends entirely on how we look at the combination of tax and tax credit. The simple point is that the top quintile—the top 20%—has paid four times as much in deficit reduction as the group to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.
Vince Cable
As I said, the whole of society was hit by the economic crisis, but it is clear that the poorest in society have not been proportionately badly hit, and the people at the top have paid proportionately more. I remind the hon. Lady of what the IFS data said, which was that if we take into account inequality in all its aspects—that includes tax, tax credits and earnings—in income terms Britain is more equal, or as equal now as it was under a Labour Government. Labour Members may need to explain why the economy got into that position when they were in office, but that is what the independent sources tell us.
In addition to the tax allowance, the other key step has been protection of the minimum wage and the Low Pay Commission. I was alarmed by comments made yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition about the minimum wage. I am not one of the people who wants to trash everything that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) did when in office. There were some mistakes but also some good things, not least making the setting of interest rates independent through the central Bank—a very positive step. Supporting science was another positive step, as was the establishment of the Low Pay Commission as a mechanism for deciding what is in the national interest as far as the minimum wage is concerned, and how we balance the perfectly natural wish of working people to see their wages rise with the overall interests of the economy and employment.
What was alarming about the comments of the Leader of the Opposition yesterday was that he now wishes to turn that valuable inheritance into a political football. I think he originally said that he would determine politically that there should be an £8 minimum wage, regardless of the conditions of the economy. Yesterday it was “at least £8”, but why not £8.50, £9 or £10? We could all bid in a Dutch auction on the minimum wage, but it would be ruinous for the economy.
Vince Cable
The Chancellor did not announce that as a goal; he made a projection about what, under certain assumptions, the minimum wage would be. He has agreed with me and we have a combined view that we should accept the advice of the Low Pay Commission, which is what we have done. We have maintained a valuable institution, and I am seriously worried about the irresponsibility that has crept in as a result of that simple populist gesture by the Leader of the Opposition. That is not just damaging to the economy in the future, but it undermines a valuable institution that his predecessor brought in.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I think you will agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this has been an excellent and often revealing debate on the impact of the Budget. I thank hon. Members for making excellent contributions.
The Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee rightly criticised the Chancellor’s use of the words “walking tall”, which ring hollow when people are walking to a food bank. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) reminded us of memory, particularly with regard to the Lib Dems helping to stop the education maintenance allowance and how the Government have also failed to meet their policy objectives on deficit reduction and debt, which I will return to later.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) rightly mentioned how the NHS, local government and housing are in crisis, threatened still further by the proposed sharp acceleration of cuts to public spending.
I was particularly pleased to hear the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who rightly talked about the importance of entrepreneurs and the self-employed in the British economy. She praised Alice Murray, founder of Giggles and Games. I thought that the Liberal Democrats’ yellow toytown box was by Fisher Price, but I wonder whether Giggles and Games might have produced it for that toytown and busted flush of a political party.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) mentioned the £30 billion post-election bombshell if these plans go through. She also talked about the pressure on working families in her constituency with regard to child care, so I think she welcomes Labour’s plan to provide 25 hours of free child care for working parents of three and four-year-olds.
My parliamentary neighbours, my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), made excellent contributions. They rightly said that there is nothing in this Budget for people in Teesside, east Durham or, indeed, the whole of the north-east. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North mentioned the disproportionate cuts in our area—they are far worse than those in any other area—to police, fire and local government. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington said that he was underwhelmed by the Budget and talked about the pressure on his constituents. They will know that the Chancellor mentioned Agincourt more times than the north-east, but they will not be surprised, because the Government’s record shows that he has neglected the north-east for the whole of the past five years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) argued for his own city to be given similar freedoms on business rates to those given to Greater Manchester. I particularly liked his subtle references to Beatles songs: he quoted lyrics from two songs on “Abbey Road” when he said that the Chancellor was more like the “Sun King” than “Here Comes the Sun”. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) mentioned the importance of manufacturing to a modern, innovative and resilient economy, and I fully agree with him.
In an at times warm speech, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) was kind enough to mention Hartlepool United. I think he was being kind, but we are bottom of the Football League at the moment.
Mr Wright
As the shadow Chancellor says, the only way is up. We have just won two games on the trot, which is unusual for us. We are only four points away from the next team up, so we have everything to play for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) told us that this Government’s tax and benefit changes mean that families are on average £1,127 a year worse off. She has been a fantastic champion of the NHS, and she mentioned how A and E and the rest of the NHS is at breaking point. She said that Oldham never had a food bank until 2012, which is very similar to my experience in Hartlepool and to the experience elsewhere around the country. I particularly pay tribute to her for being a champion in tackling late payments to contractors, which can be a blight on small businesses trying to pay their way in the economy.
Several hon. Members who spoke are leaving the House voluntarily; I imagine that several others will leave involuntarily. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) and for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles). I am genuinely sorry that they have decided not to stand again, but I look forward to welcoming the excellent Natasha Millward to the House, and to Mike O’Brien coming back. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who has been a fantastic champion for park homes, on which we have worked closely together.
I want to single out the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), who has just walked into the Chamber. I consider him a real friend to me and to business in this country, as he is very knowledgeable. Before he leaves this place, I hope that we can have a pint and celebrate the great work that he has done, and the great work he will continue to do.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrea Leadsom)
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber for their contributions this afternoon. For some, it will have been their last contribution in the Chamber. I congratulate them on choosing such an important final debate.
The truth is that everybody wants economic growth and greater employment. No Government in the world say that they want less growth and fewer jobs. However, there is a big difference between talking about something and achieving it. This Government are proud of our achievements: the fastest growth of any major advanced economy in the world, employment at a record high, unemployment at a record low, rising living standards, a falling deficit and the return of national optimism. And we have done all that within five years of the worst ever peacetime recession, which was caused not only by the financial crisis, but by the spending of the Labour party from 2001 onwards.
There have been some very good contributions this afternoon. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) raised the sale of the student loan book. I can tell him that the first tranche is expected to be sold by the end of 2015-16 and that over a five-year period the sales are expected to generate between £10 billion and £15 billion in revenues.
The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) spoke about living standards. Perhaps I can lay his concerns to rest by telling him what Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said was
“the difference between Mr Osborne’s £900 better off and Mr Miliband’s £1,600 worse off”.
He said:
“In part the difference arises because Mr Miliband is talking about gross earnings, not net incomes. The latter allows the fuller description of what has happened to household living standards.”
It is important for all Members to understand the reality of how our economy is performing.
Andrea Leadsom
The right hon. Gentleman will realise that I have just quoted Paul Johnson of the IFS. I stand by what the IFS has said, which is that, from 2010 to 2015, the average household is £900 better off.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) welcomed the fall in unemployment, the many who have been taken out of tax, and the fuel duty freeze, which has been great for his constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) spoke about the fact that Dudley is full of hard-working people, and said how our support for businesses has helped them. He will certainly be missed in this place.
The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) criticised many of the coalition’s cuts but did not say how he would sort out the huge financial mess left by the Labour party in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) gave impressive figures for improvements in his constituency, not just to the local economy but also to local public services. As he pointed out, a strong economy means that we can pay for excellent public services. I wish him every success in his career when he leaves this place.
The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) welcomed the increase in personal allowances and the rise in gift aid for charity cash collections. I join her in congratulating Giggles and Games in her constituency on its prize for a thriving business. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) raised the important issue of housing. He welcomed the Budget creating 20 housing zones, and made important suggestions about the need to improve housing supply, including through self-build. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) talked about problems of poverty in her constituency, but acknowledged that the route out of poverty is work. She should welcome the fact that the total claimant count in her constituency is down by 39% since 2010. She also raised the issue of real-time data for credit reference agencies. The FCA is continuing to focus on achieving real-time data sharing, and significant progress is being made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) pointed out the economic benefits to her constituency of regeneration and making work pay, as well as the business rate reliefs for her high street and support for the creative industries. She highlights the urgent need for faster broadband and more new housing, and I agree with her about that. The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) challenged the quality of the jobs available, so I am sure he will be pleased to know that since Q1 2010, more than 70% of the increase in employment has come from full-time workers, two thirds of whom have been in high-skilled occupations, and that the claimant count in his constituency is down by 25% since May 2010.
Tax Avoidance (HSBC)
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 8 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.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement about the HSBC tax evasion scandal.
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not wish to be pedantic, simply accurate, but I think the wording of the urgent question was “avoidance”—the tax avoidance scandal. The point is on the record.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
The allegations about tax evasion at HSBC Swiss are extremely serious and have been the subject of extensive investigation by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Money has been recovered for the Exchequer, and HMRC continues to be in active discussion with our prosecuting authorities. The chief executive of HMRC and the Director of Public Prosecutions have confirmed that they have the necessary resources to carry out their work on this matter, and if they need more resources they will get them.
The House should know, however, that in each and every case the alleged tax evasion—both by individuals and the bank—happened before 2006 when the shadow Chancellor was the principal adviser on tax policy and economic affairs to the then Labour Government. News that the French had got hold of the files with the names of the bank accounts became publicly known in 2009 when the shadow Chancellor was sitting on the Government Benches, and the files were requested and recovered by HMRC before May 2010, when he was a member of the Cabinet.
The right hon. Gentleman has written to ask me five questions about my responsibilities. I will answer each one directly, and in return he can account for his own responsibilities. He asked about what he calls the selective prosecution policy pursued by HMRC, and whether that decision was made by Ministers. Yes, that decision was made by Ministers, and the Inland Revenue’s overall approach to prosecuting cases of suspected serious tax fraud was set out in the Official Report on 7 November 2002, column 784W, in an answer by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). That was confirmed again when HMRC was created in 2005—again by the right hon. Gentleman. I have increased resources for tackling tax evasion, and as a result prosecutions are up fivefold. I have answered for my responsibility on that question; perhaps the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) will answer for his and tell us whether he drafted that policy.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman asked when I was first made aware of the HSBC files, what action I took, and whether I discussed them with the Prime Minister. I first became aware of the existence of the files in 2009 when a story appeared in the Financial Times. I was shadow Chancellor at the time so I could take no action, and I could not discuss it with the then Prime Minister because I was not on speaking terms with him. That is what I knew. The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood was a Cabinet Minister. When he heard about these revelations, did he speak to the Prime Minister about them?
Thirdly, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood asked why we appointed Stephen Green to the Government. We appointed him because we thought he would do a good job as trade Minister, as did the Labour party, which welcomed the appointment. The trade job was not Stephen Green’s first public appointment. That was when he was appointed by the previous Government to be not just a member of the Prime Minister’s business council but its chair—a post he continued to hold after the existence of the HSBC files became public and after HMRC negotiated to recover them under the previous Government. I have explained why we appointed Stephen Green. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood will explain why he appointed Stephen Green.
Fourthly, the right hon. Gentleman asked about discussions with Stephen Green on tax evasion. I can confirm that the Cabinet Secretary and the director general of ethics at the Cabinet Office carried out the background checks for ministerial appointments that were put in place by the previous Government. Stephen Green’s personal tax affairs were examined by HMRC on behalf of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, again using the procedures put in place by the previous Government. Those are the procedures we followed when we appointed Stephen Green. What procedures did the right hon. Gentleman follow?
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me why I signed a deal with the Swiss authorities in 2012. He does not need my explanation. Listen to what the shadow Chief Secretary at the time, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), said:
“We support the agreement signed by the UK and Swiss Governments to secure billions in unpaid tax.”––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 26 June 2012; c. 655.]
She is right: billions of unpaid tax never collected under a Labour Government. Under this Government, tax evasion is at the top of the G8 agenda. We have collected more money and prosecutions have increased five times over. Ahead of the Budget, I set the Treasury to work on providing further ways to pursue not just the tax evaders, but those providing them with advice. So anyone involved in tax evasion, whatever your role, this Government are coming after you. Unlike the previous Government, who simply turned a blind eye, this Government are taking action now and will do so again at the Budget. So I am happy, any time, to answer for our record on tackling tax evasion. Now, let him account for his.
Ed Balls
Finally, the Chancellor has been dragged to the House to answer questions about the HSBC scandal, which broke a full two weeks ago. At a time when the living standards of working people are squeezed, when our public services are under pressure, when HSBC is paying out high bonuses and when the amount of uncollected tax has gone up under this Government, we need proper answers, not another Chancellor sweeping these issues under the carpet as we have heard today. [Interruption.] I think the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) should listen to these questions and then the Chancellor can tell us whether he actually has any answers. Don’t you agree, Mr Speaker?
Detailed information was passed to this Government in May 2010 about 1,100 HSBC clients—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. These exchanges are not, frankly, to the advantage of this House. They will be conducted in a more decorous atmosphere. I say to Members on both sides who are calculatedly trying to whip it up and are shouting at the tops of their voices, some holding very senior positions in this House: cut it out or get out.
Ed Balls
We know when they shout that it is because they have something to hide, Mr Speaker. That is the truth.
First, let me ask the Chancellor about what he knew and when. Two weeks ago, Downing street announced that no Minister found out about the HSBC issues until two-and-a-half weeks ago. At the weekend, the Chancellor said that he should not be involved in the tax dealings of any individual bank. Today, he has told us he knew in 2009. If he knew about systemic abuse on this scale in 2009, why did he not act when he became Chancellor? That is the first question.
Secondly, given that the Chancellor says he knew about this in 2009, why, five years on, has there been only one prosecution after the provision of 1,100 names? We know that in November 2012 HMRC confirmed that the Government had adopted a selective prosecution policy. Let me ask the Chancellor: given he knew what was happening at HSBC, did he confirm he wanted a selective prosecution policy in these cases?
Thirdly, why in 2012 did the Chancellor sign a deal with the Swiss authorities that has prevented the UK from actively obtaining similar information in the future? The agreement states that the UK and Swiss Governments will
“not actively seek to acquire customer data stolen from Swiss banks”.
Why sign up to a declaration that clearly impedes HMRC’s and the Government’s ability to act in the future? Two weeks ago, they told us it was because they did not know, but we now know that the Chancellor has known for six years. Why did he sign that deal?
Fourthly, if the Chancellor and the Prime Minister knew what was happening at HSBC in 2009, why, one month after the Government received these files, did they appoint the chair of HSBC during the period in question as a Conservative peer and Minister? What due diligence did the Government carry out in advance, and did the Prime Minister and the Chancellor see the details? Fifthly, did Lord Green have any involvement in the Swiss tax deal when he was a trade Minister? Did he ever advise the Treasury on it? Did the Chancellor discuss what happened at HSBC with Lord Green in the almost three years he was a Conservative Minister? Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister was unable to answer that question. Did the Chancellor discuss the Swiss deal and those past events at HSBC with Lord Green, who was appointed as a Minister after this scandal came to light?
It is not good enough for the Chancellor to shout and bluster, and to try and sweep these questions under the carpet and claim he did not ask the questions. Since the Government were given the files, he has been the Chancellor for five years. Is it not clear either that he and the Prime Minister were negligent in failing to act on the evidence the Government received, including about HSBC and Lord Green, or, just as with the appointment of Mr Coulson, that they deliberately turned a blind eye?
Mr Osborne
Well, I do not think that performance will save the shadow Chancellor’s political career. Every single question he asked I had already answered. The whole House can see that the person bringing this question to the House is the person with the most to answer for, and that he has no answers. He has nothing to say about the fact that every single one of these alleged offences occurred when he was the principal tax adviser to the last Labour Government, and nothing to say about the fact that the HSBC files came to light while he was in office. He said I admitted I knew about them in 2009. I read the Financial Times—it was in the newspapers; he was in the Cabinet and did absolutely nothing about it. He said that the information was provided to the Government in May 2010.
Mr Osborne
He nods his head, but the information was provided in April 2010, when there was a Labour Government and he was in the Cabinet. He has nothing to say either about the agreement with the French authorities restricting the use that could be made of this information—an agreement that we are now busily trying to change.
None of these things has the shadow Chancellor admitted to or apologised for, and none of it is of any surprise to Government Members, because the Labour party was the friend of the tax avoiders and the tax evaders when it was in office. When we entered office, City bankers were paying lower tax rates than those who cleaned for them; foreigners were not paying capital gains tax; hedge funds were abusing partnership rules; and the richest in our society routinely did not pay stamp duty at all. We have put at end to all of that, and we will take more action in the Budget. All we have on the Opposition Benches is a bunch of arsonists throwing rocks at the firefighters who are putting out the fire that they started.
The shadow Chancellor comes to the House fighting for his political life. He asks about tax evasion, but he was the principal tax adviser when tax evasion occurred. His economic policy is in tatters, and he cannot name a single business supporter of his business policy. His tax avoidance campaign has turned into a war with his own window cleaner. Now he has lost the confidence of his colleagues and his leader, but he lost the confidence of the country a long time ago.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that national insurance is a tax on jobs—
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is a champion of businesses in his constituency. That is one of the reasons unemployment has fallen in Windsor and 2,000 businesses in Windsor are benefiting from our employment allowance. We are going to go on reducing national insurance on employing 21-year-olds and apprentices. The alternative path—the path offered by the Labour party—is to put the jobs tax up. That would increase unemployment and return Britain to the economic mess it was in when Labour was last in charge.
Mr Osborne
The new tax relief for theatres has been a real success. It has been taken up by many theatres and is supporting regional productions. Separately, at my hon. Friend’s request, we have also helped the Royal Shakespeare Company to take its plays to China. Orchestra tax relief, the consultation on which we announced last week, will be another huge boost for British culture and music. We will set out further details in the Budget about how it will work, but it will be there to support a thriving orchestra industry—if that is the right word!
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
First, on a note of consensus, today is Holocaust memorial day. Following our conversation last night concerning today’s report by the cross-party Holocaust commission, on which I am proud to serve, will the Chancellor confirm the cross-party agreement to fund the commission’s recommendations, alongside ongoing funding, for the rest of the decade, for the vital work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, to ensure we have a new and permanent memorial and that future generations never forget that terrible atrocity?
Turning to today’s GDP figures, is the Chancellor, like me, concerned that economic growth is slowing? With just 100 days until the election, will working people be better off than when he became Chancellor, or will they be worse off?
Mr Osborne
First, this being the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we should remember the inhumanity and the suffering of those who died and those who live with the memories of the holocaust, and we should vow as a nation to keep their memory alive. The right hon. Gentleman and Members from other political parties served on the Holocaust commission, the chairman of which, Mick Davis, briefed the Cabinet today on its proposals for a permanent memorial and an education learning centre. I made it clear in the Cabinet meeting that the Government would provide £50 million to support this brilliant plan, and of course we will continue to fund the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, which takes Members and many school children to Auschwitz to see for themselves the horror that happened there. Across the House, we can come together to commemorate this day and ensure that the holocaust is never forgotten and that we never repeat its mistakes.
I hope you, Mr Speaker, will allow me a slight change of tone for a couple of seconds. The GDP numbers, which the shadow Chancellor complains about, show that Britain’s was the fastest-growing major economy in the world in 2014. He kept telling me to listen to the IMF—well, the head of that organisation said that few countries were driving growth like America and the UK. Growth is improving, the deficit has been reduced and unemployment is falling, and the President of the United States says we must be doing something right. When the shadow Chancellor complained about the Prime Minister’s going for dinner at the White House, he said, “I haven’t been neglected. They invited me in and gave me coffee and biscuits.” That is all the endorsement he is going to get for his economic plan anywhere in the world.
Ed Balls
It is good we have cross-party agreement fully to fund the Holocaust commission’s report.
If things really were fine and if the economy really were fixed, people would be better off, but instead they are worse off, and the Chancellor would have balanced the books, as he promised, but he has not—he has completely failed to do it. It is because of that failure on the deficit that he is now planning spending cuts in the next Parliament that the IFS calls “colossal” and that the Office for Budget Responsibility says will take us back to levels in our economy not seen since the 1930s—before the NHS existed. Every developed country with spending as low as he is aiming for has widespread charges for health care. Is that not the real Tory economic plan?
Mr Osborne
We have a free-at-the-point-of-use national health service, which we are proud of and will continue to fund. What is clear is the total confusion in Labour’s health policy today. This morning the Labour leader said he was going to use his so-called mansion tax to pay down the deficit; six days ago the shadow Chancellor said that money would be used to pay for his NHS plan. It is total confusion today. The only way to have a strong national health service is to have a strong economy.
Let me end on this note. We read in the last couple of days that the shadow Chancellor has been sidelined from the general election:
“In a major humiliation, party bosses have quietly shunted”
him
“out of the media spotlight”.
Let me reach across the Dispatch Box and offer the hand of friendship. Let us resolve that we are both going to put him at the centre of this general election campaign.
Charter for Budget Responsibility
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment, but I want people to remember that the country knew better than to listen to Labour again. The country supported this Government as we took the difficult decisions required to cut our spending, reduce our borrowing and get our country living within its means. Then, when the problems in the eurozone became acute and the currency union on our doorstep was threatened with collapse, we heard again, as we hear now, the siren voices luring us on to the economic rocks. “Stop the cuts,” they said, “Spend more, borrow more, adopt a plan B”. But Britain stayed the course. We did not spend more. We did not spend less. We worked through our plan. The result, in the verdict of the International Monetary Fund, is that no other major economy has achieved such a substantial and consistent reduction in its structural deficit over recent years.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor told this House that if Britain was to lose its triple A credit rating it would be a disaster for Britain. Can he remind the House when Britain lost its triple A credit rating? Was he the Chancellor at the time? When are we going to get it back?
Mr Osborne
We retain our triple A credit rating with some credit rating agencies. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman one thing for sure: the only way we will get back our triple A credit rating is by dealing with our debts, cutting our spending and making sure this country can live within its means. If anyone thinks the answer to Britain’s debt problems is to borrow £170 billion more, which is what the Labour party is proposing, they will be leading Britain back into economic ruin.
We remember what the shadow Chancellor said was going to happen if we pursued this plan. He said we would choke off growth and that there would be a double-dip recession. Britain has grown faster than any other major European economy in the past four years. We have grown faster than any major economy in 2014 and the one recession we had was the one big recession, the great recession, on Labour’s watch.
Ed Balls
The Chancellor just said to the House that he has not gone slower on the deficit than he intended to in 2010, but the Office for Budget Responsibility says he has borrowed more than £200 billion more than he planned. Can he explain that remark? I have to say that I think everybody in the country will be totally baffled by the Chancellor’s remark.
Mr Osborne
We have delivered exactly the spending plans we set out in 2010—we have not gone faster, we have not gone slower. Indeed, spending this year is a little bit lower than I predicted in 2010.
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment.
There is going to be a test in this debate: will Labour confirm it will borrow more? It cannot complain about our spending cuts if it does not confirm that it would borrow more.
Mr Osborne
Would the shadow Chancellor borrow more? Let us have the B word from him.
Mr Osborne
We have delivered exactly the spending plans that I set out and which the shadow Chancellor opposed. If he is complaining about those spending plans, and if he would like to spend more, he should be honest with the British people and say that a Labour Government would like to borrow more. Why does he not have the courage to tell the truth? The truth is that he does not tell the British people the truth because he knows that when they discover he wants to borrow £170 billion more, they will not let him near Downing street again.
Mr Osborne
The hon. Gentleman can check Hansard now if he likes. I was clear that we stuck to our spending plans—we did not go faster, we did not go slower—and reduced the deficit by a half, and we are going to carry on with the job.
Mr Osborne
I will give way to the shadow Chancellor in a moment, but I want him to understand what he is asking the Labour party to vote for. To their credit, the SNP and the Green party understand that they do not want to agree with our spending cuts.
The charter sets out that the OBR will continue to monitor our fiscal rules. This is a major innovation. We take it for granted now, but only five years ago we had a Labour Chancellor and the team behind him fiddling the figures and making sure they were marked against their own rules. We then commit in the charter to achieving falling national debt by 2016-17 and a surplus on our cyclically adjusted current budget by 2017-18. That requires £30 billion of consolidation. So for the third time, I ask the shadow Chancellor: will he accept that his plans involve borrowing more? What is wrong with the “borrowing” word? He used to give whole lectures about why the country should have a fiscal stimulus and borrow more. Why does he not get up and say, “Yes, Labour would borrow more”?
Ed Balls
We can accept that the Chancellor may have misspoken—we can check Hansard—but will he confirm that he has reduced the deficit much more slowly than he intended and borrowed £200 billion more than he planned? We do not need to debate what he said. Will he just confirm whether he has reduced the deficit much slower than he planned and borrowed a lot more?
Mr Osborne
We have halved a record budget deficit to 5% of national income. The shadow Chancellor says we should have borrowed more, and his plans involve £170 billion of more borrowing, yet he finds himself in the extraordinary position of asking the Labour party to vote for a charter that requires £30 billion of more consolidation. Where should that £30 billion of consolidation come from? To be fair to the Liberal Democrats, they say we should increase taxes to help achieve that consolidation. The Conservatives say it can be achieved by bearing down on spending, the welfare budget and tax avoidance—£13 billion of savings from the Departments, £12 billion from welfare and £5 billion from tax avoidance. That is our clear plan. Labour cannot pretend to support the charter while claiming that the £30 billion does not exist. It is a totally chaotic position.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The IFS today confirmed that Labour would borrow £170 billion more. This is its published plan. It is extraordinary that Labour Members are totally silent about it. They are not prepared to talk to the British people about what I assume they believe to be the right economic policy for the country.
I want to make sense of this strange journey that the Labour party has taken on fiscal policy over this Parliament. After all the twists and turns, I think it has managed to end up in exactly the same place as it started. In 2010, as part of his pitch for the Labour leadership—we thought at the time he was a worse choice than the current leader, but given all that has happened, perhaps we were wrong—the shadow Chancellor said we should not be cutting spending. He said that more spending would grow the economy and that the economic growth would eliminate the deficit. That was the position he set out in his Bloomberg speech—his so-called plan B. The problem was it was rejected by the British public and eventually by the Labour party. So two years ago, Labour changed its approach and committed to the original phrase of “iron discipline”. The only problem was there was no iron discipline and instead it made all those spending commitments. Last autumn, it moved on to another approach—the Basil Fawlty approach—which was not to mention the deficit at all. I think the House can agree that the Labour leader executed that strategy brilliantly at the Labour party conference.
In December, at the end of last year, Labour tried something else. The shadow Chancellor announced that he would seek to balance the current budget and get debt falling, but he would not say when, saying just as soon as possible. When pressed on specific dates, he dismissed them; he said he would not sign up to some arbitrary timetable. When challenged specifically to match our plans, he said a month ago, on 11 December, that he was not going to set a timetable to balance the current budget by 2017. Here he is, one month later, saying that he is going to vote in favour of a timetable to balance the current budget by 2017-18.
I thought that was the end of Labour’s journey. They had ended up supporting a charter that they had previously rejected, a timetable to which they had previously refused to sign up and £30 billion of cuts they had previously denounced. Then, this weekend, we were treated to the spectacle on “The Andrew Marr Show” of the Labour leader dismissing the charter altogether, rejecting the £30 billion figure and returning full circle to where the Labour party started four years ago. This is what the Labour leader said on Sunday:
“if we just try and cut our way to getting rid of this deficit, it won’t work.”
That is the latest version of the Labour party’s policy. It is exactly where they were four years ago. The Labour leader has gone full circle and gone back to saying that the answer to our debts is simply to grow the economy. That is economically illiterate when we have a structural deficit, and it is based on the fiddle of trying to upgrade the country’s trend growth rates—exactly the mistake made by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) when he was Chancellor and got us into this mess. Labour has gone from plan B to plan A to no plan at all.
Ed Balls
The Chancellor is shouting a lot and sounded a bit rattled. Will he clarify where in the charter for budget responsibility it says that we are going to balance the current budget in 2017-18? It actually says that it will be done
“by the end of the third year of the rolling, five-year forecast period.”
A moment ago, the Chancellor said it would be 2017-18, but where is that in the document? I cannot find it.
Mr Osborne
It does not augur well for someone who wants to be the Chancellor that he thinks three years from now is 2017-18. [Interruption.] He will have his chance. I have been wondering what he has been up to all this time while Labour has got itself into such a mess. Let me make this observation, and then I will give way to him. This gives us a clue to what he has been up to. He said to The Independent a couple of weeks ago:
“If I am sitting”
at the piano
“and I start thinking about the deficit, it all goes wrong. On the piano, you have to be totally focused”—
and with that set of priorities, I think the British people would agree that he should go on playing the entertainer and I will go on being the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr Osborne
The third year in the period is three years; that is 2017-18. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should use his piano fingers and count one, two, three.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
We have pledged to balance the books in the next Parliament. I said a year ago that the next Labour Government would get the current budget into surplus and our national debt falling as soon as possible in the next Parliament. This charter is fully consistent with our position, so on that basis we will support the motion today. We are not going to change our view about what is in Britain’s best interests, because of another one of the Chancellor’s silly failing games.
If you do not want to take this from me, Madam Deputy Speaker, an interesting press release was issued this morning by the TaxPayers Alliance—not an organisation I normally quote in the House. This is what its chief executive said just an hour ago about this debate:
“This is a meaningless political gimmick of the most transparent kind, and one that serves only to remind taxpayers”—[Interruption.]
The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) should listen to this. The chief executive said that this gimmick
“serves only to remind taxpayers how dramatically this Chancellor has missed his own original targets.”
We are happy to vote to remind people how much the Chancellor has missed his targets.
Mr George Osborne
I have a very simple question. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks it is a gimmick, why is he getting the Labour party to support it? What is his answer to that?
Ed Balls
I will explain that in my speech. What we have before us—this so-called trap—is not a trap at all, as I will explain. I will discuss the new fiscal charter in detail in a moment, but let us first be clear about the background to today’s motion and the new charter before us. This is not the first fiscal charter before us in this Parliament, but the second. The first was presented at the beginning of the current Parliament when the Chancellor lay before the House a charter committing the coalition to balance the books in this Parliament, to get the cyclically-adjusted current budget back into balance and the national debt falling by the coming financial year 2015-16.
As I reminded the House on the day of the autumn statement, the Prime Minister actually went further in 2010. He said that he would balance the Budget in 2015. However, just a few weeks ago, in the autumn statement, independent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed that this Chancellor was not going to balance the books in 2015, or in 2015-16. In fact, public sector net borrowing in 2015-16 is now forecast to be £76 billion, £7.7 billion higher than was forecast even as recently as the Budget.
The figures on page 15 of the OBR’s “Economic and fiscal outlook” show that this Chancellor, in this Parliament, is borrowing—staggeringly—over £200 billion more than he proposed to spend in the 2010 plans. As a consequence, the national debt, compared to the 2010 forecasts, will be much higher in 2015-16 than he suggested. Back in 2010, he said that in 2015-16 the national debt would be 67.2% of GDP. According to the latest figures, it is now forecast to be not 67.2% but 81.1% of GDP, 14 percentage points higher than the Chancellor’s 2010 figure. Worse than that, according to the 2010 fiscal mandate the national debt would be falling, but the OBR figures show that in 2015-16 it will be rising again, from 80.4% to 81.1%. On the deficit, on the current deficit and on the national debt, the Chancellor made promises in 2010, in a clear fiscal charter, and he has broken every one of them.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Was my right hon. Friend as surprised as I was that, in all his political bluster, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not mention once that, while he used to say that he wanted to balance the overall budget, he now wants to commit himself to Labour’s policy of balancing the current budget, excluding capital investment? Moreover, he did not mention the fact that the fiscal mandate had been downgraded from a target to an aim.
Ed Balls
I shall provide an analysis of the new charter and why it is different from the old charter in a moment, but my hon. Friend is quite right. The Chancellor did not explain either that he had failed to meet the requirements of his charter in the current Parliament, or that he has now changed it for the next Parliament for reasons that are surprising and a bit confusing.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
Does the shadow Chancellor agree that all these fiscal forecasts are based on a forecast of spending reductions and growth in tax revenues and the economy? Does he agree that in 2010, no one on either side of the House, including him and including me, realised just how persistent the global problems were going to be and how grave the banking crisis was, and that therefore the growth that everyone—including him—expected to see was not achieved? The Government stuck to their spending plans, but could not achieve the growth forecast. Is the shadow Chancellor saying that in the middle of that grave crisis, when it was still persisting, a Labour Government would have cut our spending plans more dramatically in order to hit what he is now praising as our target?
Ed Balls
As ever, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has got to the heart of the issue. Three factors can bring the deficit down: spending cuts, decisions to raise taxes, and what happens to the underlying growth of the economy and the tax revenues which flow from that. The Chancellor did not talk about the third factor, for understandable reasons.
Ed Balls
I will give way in a second, but let me first explain this point to the former Chancellor.
Even as recently as the March Budget, the OBR made a forecast for growth and for tax revenues. Between the Budget and the autumn statement it revised the growth forecast up by a little bit, but revised income tax and national insurance substantially down because, owing to this year’s stagnating wages and cost of living crisis, growth has not brought in the revenues that the Chancellor wanted. In comparison with the March Budget, we have actually lost £8.4 billion in this fiscal year, not because spending cuts have not gone ahead or tax cuts have not been delivered, but because the tax revenues have not come in as a result of growth and stagnant wages. Ultimately, the only way of reversing the problem is yes, to cut spending, and yes, to raise taxes—as the Chancellor has done in this Parliament—but also to get the economy growing in a stronger way which will bring in tax revenues. If he does not do that, the Chancellor will carry on failing year after year, as he has in this Parliament.
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman has said that he supports this motion on austerity. Tonight he will walk through the Lobby hand in hand with the Tories. Will he tell us how the Labour party differs from the Tory party?
Ed Balls
I will explain the nature of the fiscal charter and how it works in a moment. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will then see the stark difference between our position and the position of the Conservatives. He will probably find that he agrees much more with our position than with theirs.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The point that my right hon. Friend has made about low pay and tax revenues is crucial, but is it not also the case that since 2010 the Government have spent £25 billion more on social security than they originally planned to spend because of that failure on low pay and the failure to deal with the cost-of-living crisis?
Ed Balls
That is true. If we compare the welfare spending plans that the Chancellor set out in 2010 to the actual outturns, we see that he has overspent in this Parliament by £25 billion. He has spent £25 billion more on disability and housing benefits because of what has happened to the economy. The former Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), is right. We have to deal with the big issues rather than playing silly political games.
Ed Balls
I will give way in a moment, but I want to deal in a bit more detail with the interesting point that has been raised. What is clear not just from the Chancellor’s speech, but from his whole chancellorship, is that—unlike the former Chancellor—he has never really gripped the actual economics of what happens in our economy. He understands slogans, but he does not understand how the economy actually works. Let me explain it.
We all know that the Chancellor flatlined the economy for two or three years after 2010. Now, although the economy has recovered, growth has returned and unemployment has come down, the fact is jobs have been created in low-paid, often insecure work. There is lower productivity in our economy, many people are trapped in part-time employment and zero-hours contracts, and, as a result, tax revenues have not come in.
According to the OBR, income tax receipts are a cumulative £68 billion lower than the Chancellor’s 2010 forecast, and national insurance contributions are a cumulative £27 billion lower than he planned. His fiscal failure in this Parliament—which he could not deny when we asked him about it earlier—has occurred not because he has failed to deliver spending cuts or because he has not raised VAT, but because of the underlying way in which the economy works. Because more people are in low-paid work and wages are stagnating, the tax revenues have not come in. It is clear from the Chancellor’s speech that he does not understand the economics of the matter, but that is the truth. I know that the former Chancellor understands it.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
Is it not also the case that many people who are in work are receiving benefits, and is that not a symptom of the low-wage economy? Given that we are discussing budget responsibility, is my right hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the fact that the Chancellor promised an unfunded tax cut at the Conservative party conference, but is talking about consolidation today?
Ed Balls
I will give way in a second, but I want to develop a point that the former Chancellor has helped me to make, about the relationship between receipts, growth and the deficit. Before the autumn statement, the OBR said that
“weaker-than-expected wage growth so far in 2014-15”
was
“depressing PAYE and NIC receipts.”
Then, in the autumn statement, it said, “We expect earnings growth to remain subdued for longer than in March. This is the key driver in the lower forecast for PAYE and NIC receipts.”
The Chancellor had to revise up borrowing this year because real wage growth has been revised down for this year, next year and the year after. In table 4.10 of its document, the OBR forecasts a cumulative loss even in relation to the Budget, and predicts that lost income tax and national insurance revenues alone will rise to £9 billion a year. The Chancellor does not understand that unless he can bring in receipts from income tax and NICs, from growth and wage growth, he will not succeed in meeting his targets without “colossal”—that is not my word, but the word used by the Institute for Fiscal Studies—cuts in public spending. The Chancellor has never really “got” the economy, and therefore he does not understand that point.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
The shadow Chancellor is claiming to have a grip on economic reality which, with great respect, I do not think he had when he was in office, but on the point, which we are getting dangerously near to agreeing on, presumably he is not saying that when we had the growth forecasts not being met in those dark days three or four years ago we should have put up income tax, any more than he is saying we should have done anything other than stick to our spending reductions. Until conditions improve, we have to attack the structural problems. Has the right hon. Gentleman not noticed the banking reform, the banking regulation, the skills training, the education reforms, the support for small business, the introduction of research and development in technology? That is the real job, but fiscal responsibility is the essential precondition before any of those things work.
Ed Balls
I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I am not going to pick over past debates, but when he led his party through the Lobby opposing Bank of England independence, well, that was then; and when he advocated Britain joining the single currency in 2003, well, that was then. We probably agree on other things these days.
Let me take the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the most recent OBR forecasts. He makes an important point about trend, and in 2010 the OBR forecast that the underlying growth in our economy—trend growth—would in this Parliament, in 2014, be 2.1%, but in its most recent document it has revised down the underlying trend in 2014 from 2.1% to 1.7%, so, despite the reforms he talks about, we have been going backwards in terms of trend growth and productivity.
On the other hand, if we can raise through reform—I will come to this in a moment—the underlying trend growth of the economy, we can turn this around. These are not my numbers; they are the OBR numbers. The numbers show that if we were able to increase the underlying trend growth of the economy by just 1%, so it was 1% higher by 2019, which is the equivalent of about 0.2%—
Ed Balls
In a second; not in the middle of a sentence. That 0.2% a year improvement in the underlying growth of the economy would, by the end of the period, bring in £15 billion a year more in tax revenues. So the trend of growth has gone in the wrong direction under this Chancellor and the key for the next Parliament, as well as spending cuts and tax rises, is to improve the underlying growth of the economy. If we can do that, we can bring in the revenues. If, on the other hand, we fall short in the next Parliament under the same Chancellor in the same way as we have in this Parliament, that would lead to over £110 billion in extra borrowing. If we are going in the wrong direction on growth and wages, the revenues do not come in and the deficit does not come down. We have got to improve the underlying growth potential of the economy. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe and I agree on that, but I do not think that this Chancellor understands the point.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Is not the shadow Chancellor making the Chancellor’s case for him: that the first thing to do is get fiscal stability, and then we get a growing economy and tax revenues come through? Tax revenues are always a lagging indication of economic performance, and they will come through because of what this Chancellor has been doing.
Ed Balls
The problem is that the Chancellor said he would make people better off, and they are actually worse off at the end of this Parliament; he said he would balance the books, but he has not got the deficit down, and the reason is that trend growth and productivity have been weaker than he expected in 2010, which means the tax revenues have not come in. So in fact the opposite is true. It shows that we need a proper plan for jobs and growth to turn around the underlying growth of the economy. On that, he has totally failed to deliver.
Ed Balls
In a second. First, let me turn to the fiscal mandate, because this is where the Chancellor’s position becomes, to be honest, farcical. The current fiscal charter says:
“The Treasury’s mandate for fiscal policy lapses at the dissolution of this Parliament.”
Rather than lapses, I would say that it has totally collapsed in this Parliament. It is totally discredited. Even the TaxPayers Alliance can now see how discredited the Chancellor’s forecasts are for this Parliament, but the Chancellor has a bail-out clause, because in the old charter it says that he has a
“duty to set out a fiscal mandate”
which
“will require the Treasury to set out a revised mandate for fiscal policy as soon as possible in the life of the new Parliament.”
This Chancellor, always alive to trying to find a new gimmick, decided—and has told every Tory commentator going—that this is a new trap for Labour. That is what we are going to get. It is not a stunt; it is not a gimmick; it is a trap for Labour. The problem is that, as we have seen today, this has been an opportunity for us, him and the TaxPayers Alliance to highlight to the country how much he has totally failed in this Parliament on fiscal policy. It is not only a chance to show how extreme his plans are for the next Parliament—and I will come to that—but he has not even managed to deliver the trap he promised.
Guy Opperman
I did not want to disrupt the shadow Chancellor’s flow, because I know he is easily distracted. Is it not because of the Chancellor’s support for the north-east by way of city deals, manufacturing and business support that the north-east now has the fastest rate of growth in private sector business in the autumn quarter, and the highest rate of growth in exports? Surely that is evidence that this economy has been turned around by a Chancellor who cares about business and manufacturing?
Ed Balls
Maybe we could form a consensus on the way forward on devolution for the regions—I am in favour of that and so is the hon. Gentleman—and that is not the only thing we could form a consensus on, because this is what he told ConservativeHome just recently:
“A bit of extra tax on properties over £2 million seems perfectly fair to me.”
I am with him all the way. Maybe we should get together on that one as well—you shouldn’t have let that one through, George!
Let me come back to the vote and what the Chancellor said at the time of the Budget. He said:
“Britain needs to run an absolute surplus in good years…To lock in our country’s commitment to this path of deficit reduction, we will seek the support of Parliament in a vote, and I will bring forward a new charter for budget responsibility this autumn.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 784.]
The vote was supposed to be on an absolute surplus. That is what the Chancellor was talking about. The Prime Minister on 15 December—the day the new charter was published—attacked Labour for our proposal for two or three years to get the current Budget into surplus. What was surprising about that speech was that the Prime Minister made it, did the Q and A, and got off the stage before the Treasury published the new charter. That was an odd thing to do when he was talking up the charter. Why would they not put it out in advance? It turned out to be because the Prime Minister had just finished a speech attacking Labour and our plan to get the current Budget into surplus, and then the Treasury published a new fiscal charter committing the Government to get the current Budget into surplus. No wonder he got off the stage so quickly.
The Chancellor promised in the last Budget a vote to balance the overall budget. Now the Government have done a U-turn and are proposing a vote on the current Budget excluding capital investment, which is the same measure we have been committed to for three years. Can he confirm that in the last Budget he promised a vote on an absolute Budget surplus and this charter before us is a vote on the current Budget? Is that right?
Also, when we study the fine print of this fiscal mandate, we find that it turns out to be even more different from the old one than I expected. The old fiscal mandate talked about having a target to balance the current Budget in 2015-16 and a target to have the national debt falling. We can see why this Chancellor has got a little worried about setting targets because they have not gone very well. It turns out that in this new document it has been downgraded from a target to an aim. Why have the words changed? Would the Chancellor like to explain?
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
Will the shadow Chancellor give way?
Ed Balls
In a second.
As we established a moment ago, even though according to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister the vote is on balancing the current Budget in 2017-18, in fact when we read this charter, we find that there is no mention anywhere of the dates 2017-18. It is baffling that they are not there. Let me read it out. It talks about
“a forward-looking aim to achieve cyclically-adjusted current balance by the end of the third year of the rolling, 5-year forecast period.”
What on earth does that mean?
Ed Balls
I will give way in a moment. Let me explain what is going on here. It is a three-year rolling target, so in 2015—[Interruption.] Let me explain it to the Deputy Chief Whip or whatever he is—the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). In 2015 the three-year target presumably refers to 2017-18, but in 2016 it is rolled forward to 2019 because that is three years later. In 2017, it rolls on to 2020 and in 2018 it rolls on to 2021. It is a three-year rolling target, so it rolls on, which means that the Chancellor could come back to the House in 2020 and say, “It is okay. Consistent with the charter, I am meeting the aim because I am balancing the current budget in 2023.” That is what this says and it is utterly ridiculous. It does not even sign him and his party up to balancing the current budget by the end of the next Parliament. The fact is that for all the boasts, the rhetoric and the talk of traps, in this new charter before the House it is not targets but aims; it is not balancing the overall budget but the current budget; it is not an absolute commitment to deliver a surplus in the next Parliament, but an absolute commitment to a three-year rolling five-year target. The Chancellor has spent all of the past nine months telling everybody what a clever wheeze this is and, once again, it has totally backfired. It is less of a trap and more of a load of complete pony and trap. That is what we have before us today.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that perhaps one problem with a rolling target is that it is very difficult to hit? The point for many people is this: low-paid workers in my constituency do not get to pay tax at all; instead they need the taxman to be giving them money. Is it not because so many people need in-work benefits—they work and yet the taxman gives them money—that the Chancellor is spending £25 billion more than he expected to in 2010?
Ed Balls
He is. As my hon. Friend says, not only has the Chancellor overspent in this Parliament, but he is promising £12 billion of further cuts in the next Parliament, and as the IFS made clear in December, his party has been totally unspecific about where any of those will fall, beyond the fact that they will be hitting the tax credits of working people.
Mr Robinson
If the Chancellor wanted to say 2017-18, why did he not say 2017-18, instead of using this convoluted third year of a five-year rolling average? By definition, we never get to it—that is probably what his policy really is.
Ed Balls
It is either a three-year rolling five-year target to avoid ever getting to be judged on it, or it is because he could not get his quad partners to agree with it before the autumn statement. We know from the letter from the OBR that the quad signed up to the spending cuts, but perhaps the quad did not quite sign up to the fiscal charter the Chancellor wanted.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that perhaps the reason for the wording is that at any given point when the Chancellor is asked whether he has met the aim—not the target—he can say, “We are going to meet the aim because this is now the five-year rolling period and we aim to meet it in the third year”? But in no specific year will he actually be held to account for whether he has met it.
Ed Balls
Of course that is exactly what the Chancellor has done in this Parliament. In 2010, when he set his first mandate, he said that this would be done by the end of the rolling five-year forecast period. In 2010, the Prime Minister clearly thought that that meant 2015 but the Chancellor now thinks it means 2018 or 2019, which is why he still says he is meeting his fiscal target. Everybody else can see it is a completely preposterous claim.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The shadow Chancellor has called this proposal a load of “pony and trap”, which I believe is a metaphor for something else. He has also called it a “gimmick”. He knows that many in his own party oppose it, but he has not explained to this House why he is forcing them to vote for it.
Mr Clarke
The shadow Chancellor is very generous, and I assure him that this is my last intervention. I am afraid I am not quite following this rambling textual analysis, so let me take him back to where I thought we were near to agreeing. He agrees that we were right to stick to our spending reductions and that further fiscal consolidation of the kind the Chancellor is describing is required. The shadow Chancellor’s case appears to be that he has some great plans that will increase our underlying growth rate in future, on top of those the Government already have. Is he going to set out these startling new plans in the remainder of his speech?
Ed Balls
I will do so. Let me just say, for the interest of the former Chancellor, because it was not like this in his day or when I was in the Treasury, that our trend rate of growth in 2014—1.17%—puts us 19th out of 34 countries in the OECD. We have a lower underlying trend than Chile, Israel, South Korea, Australia, Mexico and Poland—and the list goes on. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is completely right: we have to find a way to strengthen the underlying growth of the economy.
Let me come on to Labour’s position. We will cut the deficit every year. We will get the current budget into surplus. We will get the national debt falling as soon as possible in the next Parliament, fully consistent with this fiscal charter. How fast we can do this will depend on what happens to growth, wages, the housing benefit bill and events around the world. But our approach will be very different from that of the Conservatives, on the following fronts. We believe, unlike the one-club Chancellor, that three different things need to be done to properly and fairly balance the books in the next Parliament.
First, as we have said, because we will cut the deficit every year, there will be sensible spending cuts in non-protected areas. We will cut the winter allowance, taking it away from the richest 5% of pensioners. We will cap child benefit at 1% for two years, and our zero-based review is examining every pound the Government spend in order to find savings. Secondly, we will make different and fairer choices, including reversing this Government’s £3 billion-a-year top-rate tax cut for people earning more than £150,000. Thirdly, our plan will deliver the rising living standards and stronger—
Ed Balls
No. Our plan will deliver the rising living standards and stronger growth needed to balance the books: We will have more free child care, paid for by the bank levy; we will properly capitalise the business investment bank; we will raise the national minimum wage faster than wages; we will repeat the bank bonus tax to get young people back to work; we will devolve full growth in business rates to city and county regions; and we will get the houses built that we need—200,000 a year more by 2020. That is all part of a proper long-term plan for growth and jobs.
The OBR figures show that if our economy was not to slow down next year, the year after and the year after that but instead grew 0.5% faster, that cumulatively would bring in £32 billion in the next Parliament. If we could increase the underlying trend rate of growth in the next Parliament by 0.25%, that would mean £19 billion a year more in tax revenues by the end of the Parliament. This is not only about tax rises and spending cuts; it is also about growth, jobs and the underlying trend. This Chancellor has seen growth downgraded—we have got to do a better job. Unless we do that, we will not see the books balanced in the next Parliament. So that is what we mean by an economy that works for working people and a tough, fair and balanced plan to get the deficit down.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
We are only 114 days from the general election and the shadow Chancellor has spent the past four years and more criticising and saying what he would object to. Why does he not put before the House and before the people of this country his proposals for increasing taxes, which he has said he will do. Will he say where those are going to come from for the hard-working people of my constituency and other constituencies in this country?
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Gavin Barwell)
Which taxes are you going to put up?
Ed Balls
We are going to put the top rate of tax back to 50% for people earning over £150,000, and if the hon. Gentleman wanted to win his seat, he would support it.
Instead this Chancellor is taking an increasingly unbalanced and extreme approach. Let us look at what he has failed to put in the charter. He has not included asking those with broader shoulders to make a greater contribution, as I just said. He has not said that we need to strengthen the underlying growth of our economy and improve living standards. Instead, he has made up for all that loss of tax revenue by imposing even bigger spending cuts in the autumn statement than he was planning.
Let me outline the facts to the House. More than 61% of planned departmental spending cuts are still to come in the next Parliament under this Chancellor. There is a further cut for unprotected Departments of 26.3% over the next four years, which is a third bigger than in the previous Parliament. There will be the biggest fall in day-to-day spending on public services in any four-year period since the second world war. That is what is in the Chancellor’s prospectus for his manifesto. We are talking about cuts that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called “colossal” and that the OBR says will take spending on public services back to the level of the 1930s as a percentage of GDP. That is the Chancellor’s extreme and unbalanced plan, and that is what we are opposing.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
If Government Members are so dismissive of Labour’s plans, why will they not let the OBR independently audit our plans instead of using civil servants fraudulently to manufacture fictitious dossiers about Labour’s plans? Is it that they are scared?
Steve McCabe
I will happily withdraw the term “fraudulent”, but I do think the Government are misusing civil servants.
Ed Balls
On the issue of the dossier, to which my hon. Friend just referred, the Conservative peer and former head of the Conservative party think-tank, Lord Finkelstein, described the figures in the Chancellor’s document as “ridiculous”. Mr d’Ancona, the commentator from the Evening Standard, said:
“Indeed, if the Tories are to win…they cannot afford schoolboy errors of the sort that wrecked their dossier this week”.
I will not say that they are fraudulent, but there was a whole series of untruths in that document, which the Chancellor should withdraw so that we can have a proper debate. He could go further than that and agree with the proposal from Labour, the Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and not have the Chancellor—or supposedly the Treasury—costing Opposition policies based on political assumptions and special advisers. Why not ask the OBR to do that audit? He could have done that at any time in the past 18 months. Many have called for that to happen. [Hon. Members: “Why not?”] I will tell Members why not. It is because he has made £7 billion of unfunded and uncosted commitments to cut taxes, and he cannot say where the money will come from. Rather than having an honest debate, he wants to spread smears about Labour’s plans, which he knows will not stand up to independent scrutiny. That is the reason. He could have joined the cross-party consensus, and we could have been voting today in this new fiscal charter to allow the OBR to play that role. That is what should have happened. It is what we called for and what many others supported last year, but this Chancellor has ducked it because he does not have the courage to have an honest debate. That is the reality.
The Chancellor claims that his policy is working. There is nothing competent about borrowing £200 billion more than was planned. Our plan would cut the deficit every year and balance the books. His extreme plan will take public spending back to the level of the 1930s. This Chancellor should stop spending his time playing silly political games, which time and again backfire as they have backfired on him today. He should sort out the economy and spend a bit more time making his sums add up.
Mr Clarke
I entirely agree. The shadow Chancellor has done just the same today. In his way of looking at things, the future trend rate of growth will be what he says the future trend rate of growth has to be to justify his plans. I used to envy the Ministers in China, who did not have to worry about a national statistical office: what the Minister said the growth rate was now was what the statisticians told him his growth rate was.
Ed Balls
I am sure the former Chancellor knows that decisions on the trend rate of growth in previous Parliaments were not made by the Treasury; they were audited by the National Audit Office. They are now a matter for the OBR, not for the Treasury, but he agrees with me that that is what we should do.
Mr Clarke
A lot of people did not—I did not—foresee the full extent of the catastrophic crash that resulted from the combination of problems in both the regulation of banks and the credit markets and in fiscal policy that occurred under what, with hindsight, were the most irresponsible Government we have had since the war. I will not mention the invasion of Iraq—another matter they presided over.
Everybody has to have their targets and ambitions. My stated target when I was Chancellor was to balance the budget over the cycle, which is really where we are going back to and which I think is essential prudence. I also said we should not spend more than 40% of GDP—Conservatives before me had allowed spending to get above that. The Maastricht criteria were quite useful—the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath used to agree with them—but we have to have targets, and the new ones, in a more globalised economy, cannot return to where we were. The Chancellor has to respond to events, but I congratulate my right hon. Friend on what he has achieved so far, and what he will achieve if he sticks to the charter.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
It is always a great pleasure to follow the former Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), and to see him so loyally supporting the present Chancellor. He does so against all the evidence, because I cannot think of a single target of any significance—apart from on unemployment, which we will come to in a moment—that this Government have achieved from what they set out to do in 2010. I think the shadow Chancellor wanted to set this proposal up—
Mr Robinson
I beg his pardon—the Chancellor, soon to be shadow Chancellor.
It is worth thinking briefly about why we are having this debate at all. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), I do not often agree with the TaxPayers Alliance, but on this I think the TPA has got it dead right. Mr Jonathan Isaby, the chief executive, says:
“This is a meaningless political gimmick of the most transparent kind, and one that serves only to remind taxpayers”—
of this Government’s failure. We will come to that in a minute, along with what happened under the Labour Government all those years ago. What the Chancellor always fails to mention is what happened on black Friday, when the Prime Minister, no less, was a senior adviser to the Treasury. That was only a few years before the period on which the Chancellor dwells with such delight, thinking it indicative of future events. What he is doing is meaningless.
The TaxPayers Alliance statement continues:
“This…serves only to remind taxpayers how dramatically the Chancellor has missed his own original targets.”
I could not agree more. The TPA says that
“Mr Osborne was right to call this legislative pantomime ‘vacuous’”—
and that is about what it is. Today, the right hon. Gentleman tried to turn this into a political, general election-type of debate—way ahead of the date of course—and to step up the temperature, but, quite simply, it backfired. The shadow Chancellor—and some of the Chancellor’s own Back Benchers—turned the tables on him. Much though the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe, the former Chancellor, might try to make a case for the Government’s policy, the case simply does not stack up.
We will deal with unemployment in a moment, because that is very important. What single major target in the Government’s 2010 plan have they actually met? I know targets or aims—whatever one calls them—are difficult. The bigger the entity one tries to budget for and forecast, the bigger the difficulties get; we all know that. Some are hit and some are missed, but this Chancellor has missed every single target since 2010. Growth—apart from unemployment, which we will come back to—[Interruption.] All right, let us deal with it.
Why is it that, the unemployment target having been hit, tax receipts are so low? It is because all other parts of economic policy have failed and the Chancellor does not want to face up to it. My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor gave the figures. Why are tax receipts so below what the Chancellor forecast, despite doing well on employment? It is because we have, despite what he says, a low-skill, low-wage economy. That is why tax receipts are much less than we would expect at this stage in the economic cycle. That is his failure, yet again.
Exports have failed. Growth has failed. The budget deficit has failed. Borrowing has failed. It is staggering: the Chancellor is borrowing £220 billion more than he forecast. He said he would eliminate the deficit, but what has he actually achieved? The deficit is still running at almost £100 billion a year. These are mind-boggling sums and it is a mind-boggling failure by the Chancellor that he has given us the opportunity today to debate. I hope he is regretting it. We are certainly enjoying it.
Autumn Statement
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The House has not yet seen the detailed—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I made it clear that the Chancellor must be heard with courtesy and the same goes for the shadow Chancellor—[Interruption.] Order. I am grateful, Mr Robertson, for your intended helpful gesticulation. I am well aware of the old ruse of people sitting below the Gangway where they think I cannot see them and yelling their heads off, either on their own initiative or because they are rather stupidly following instructions. Either way, it does not work. They should pipe down, and if they will not pipe down, it is very simple—three words that are easily understood: “Leave the Chamber.”
Ed Balls
As I was saying, the House has not yet seen the detailed documents from the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility tables—I am sure that they will arrive shortly—but I listened carefully to the Chancellor’s statement. To establish the facts, I want to start by asking him questions about issues that are vital to our country’s future: living standards and wages; tax receipts and borrowing; growth and immigration; taxation; and the national health service.
First, on living standards—[Interruption.] These questions about living standards, wages and tax receipts are important, so I advise Conservative Members to listen to them carefully, and then we will hear the answers.
Wages have not kept pace with prices for 52 of the past 53 months. Today’s OBR forecasts confirm that wage growth is once again weaker than expected. Working people are now £1,600 a year worse off than in 2010. Someone in full-time work is now £2,000 a year worse off. For working people, there is a cost of living crisis, and the squeeze on living standards not only is hitting family budgets, but has led to a shortfall in tax revenues. The OBR confirms that stagnant wages and low-paid employment have hit revenues, saying that
“weaker-than-expected wage growth so far in 2014-15”
is
“depressing PAYE and NIC receipts.”
Does the Chancellor agree with the OBR’s analysis? Will he tell us how much tax revenue has been lost this year because of stagnating wages and forced part-time employment?
The result of that shortfall in tax revenues is that, once again, the Chancellor has had to revise up his forecasts for Government borrowing. He told the House today that the deficit for this fiscal year is now expected to be £91.3 billion—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Opperman, you are normally a well-behaved young boy. Try to be a good boy. If you can be a good boy, you can stay; if you cannot restrain yourself, leave the Chamber. Go and have a cup of tea; take a pill—whatever is necessary.
Ed Balls
I am trying to establish the facts about the deficit from the Chancellor. He told the House that the deficit for this fiscal year is now expected to be £91.3 billion, but he did not set out in detail how much worse things are since the Budget. Will he tell the House by how much borrowing this year has been revised up compared with his Budget forecast?
Back in 2010, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister pledged to balance the budget by the end of this Parliament and that we would see the national debt falling this year. The Prime Minister said in 2010:
“In five years’ time, we will have balanced the books.”
Today the Chancellor has, I believe, announced that the deficit next year is forecast to be £75.9 billion. Will he confirm that number and the fact that the national debt next year is forecast not to fall, but to rise? While he has clearly missed his targets, he did not tell us the scale by which he has missed them. How much more will he have borrowed in this Parliament than he planned back in 2010?
Wages, income and borrowing have been hit so hard because productivity growth has been so weak. Today the Chancellor announced that he is forecasting that growth will not accelerate but—[Interruption.] The Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary will be interested to know that the Chancellor forecasts that growth next year will slow down. I know that the Chancellor wants to blame poor growth performance and poor productivity growth on the eurozone. I share the concerns about the eurozone—we need a plan for stronger growth in Germany and across the continent—but the weakness of the eurozone cannot explain why, despite the notable successes of a number of our companies, our export performance has been so poor, and so much worse than that of other eurozone countries. Since 2010, our export performance has been 16th in the G20. In the EU, we have been 22nd out of 28 countries; three quarters of EU countries have done better than us.
Business investment, which has also lagged behind that of our competitors, fell in the last quarter. Bank lending to small businesses is falling. The number of apprenticeships for young people is falling this year. House building under this Government is at its lowest level since the ’20s. On infrastructure, for all the Chancellor’s preheated re-announcements, barely a fifth of projects are in construction, and infrastructure output is down over 11% since 2010.
On business rates, the research and development tax credit and air passenger duty, we welcome the action that the Chancellor has taken. We will support what he has proposed on APD, but let me ask him—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber. Mr Opperman, I have told you three times, and I do not want to have to tell you again: be quiet, sit and listen. If you do not wish to do so, get out. The same goes for the Government’s Deputy Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands); I have been looking at and listening to him. Let me make it clear to him that he ought to know better. Behave or get out, man.
Ed Balls
We’ll get him out next year, Mr Speaker.
I would like to ask the Chancellor about the air passenger duty proposal. We will support what he has proposed, but following the Smith commission proposal to devolve air passenger duty to Scotland, will the Chancellor urgently lead work across Government, with the Scottish Government, on a mechanism to ensure that English airports, particularly in the north of England, are not disadvantaged by that devolution?
On business rates, while the review is welcome, it will not report, I believe, until 2016. Why can the Chancellor not take immediate action and adopt our plan to cut business rates for small companies? Why will he not increase the bank levy now and increase free child care for working people? Why will he not properly capitalise the business investment bank? Why will he not raise, as a proportion of earnings, the national minimum wage? Why will he not repeat the bank bonus tax and guarantee a compulsory job for all people? On regional devolution, why will he not devolve full growth in business rates to all city and county regions, to give them real control? We need a real plan for good jobs and more balanced growth.
On the subject of growth, the figures that the Chancellor announced reveal that growth has been revised downwards in 2016 from 2.6% to 2.2%, in 2017 from 2.6% to 2.4%, and in 2018 from 2.7% to 2.3%. Why is growth being revised downwards year after year? This is an interesting fact from the OBR: if our economy grew by just 0.5% a year faster than forecast, Government borrowing would come in more than £32 billion lower in the next Parliament. Does the Chancellor not see that those downgrades to growth are bad news? Without decisive action to sustain growth and raise living standards, and without a recovery for the many, not the few, he will carry on missing his deficit targets year after year.
Let me ask the Chancellor about another missed target. Over the past 12 months, net migration to the United Kingdom has been 260,000 people. Can he tell the House—this will be an interesting question to many Back Benchers in all parts of the House—the OBR estimate for net migration over the next 12 months that underpins the growth and public finance forecasts? It seems highly unlikely that it will be anywhere near the Prime Minister’s forecast, which is for tens of thousands. Will it be over 100,000 next year? Over 150,000? Over 200,000? This time, did the Chancellor remember to tell the Prime Minister the facts?
Turning to spending and taxation, the Prime Minister claimed in The Times a month ago that 80% of the planned spending cuts had been made. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that it is less than 50%. Can the Chancellor clarify who is right and who is wrong? He claims that in the next Parliament he can cut welfare spending by over £10 billion, but in this Parliament, spending on social security is over £20 billion higher than he planned in 2010 because of what happened to housing benefit in particular. He is planning a £3 billion real-terms cut in tax credits that will hit 3 million working people on middle and lower incomes, and once again he is hitting women harder than men.
The Prime Minister rather let the cat out of the bag earlier when he referred to “masosadism”. As I understand it, masosadism is when someone enjoys having pain inflicted on them and enjoys inflicting pain on other people. We know the Chancellor’s views on the first; it seems, from the way he smiled when he announced the tax credits cuts, that he is rather enjoying the second as well. How can it be fair to hit working people with a £3 billion cut to their tax credits when he has spent £3 billion giving a tax cut to people earning over £150,000?
When families are paying £450 more in higher VAT, does the Chancellor really think that people will fall for the Prime Minister’s latest promise of a £7 billion unfunded tax cut in the next Parliament, which even the Business Secretary has called a “fantasy”? Two months on, the Chancellor gave us no details at all of where he will get the money from—not a single penny. Is he planning to pay for that with a further rise in VAT? He said at the weekend that he has no plans to raise VAT. That is what he said before the last general election, and then he raised it after the election. He should stand at the Dispatch Box today and promise that he will not raise VAT again for families and pensioners.
On the national health service, we welcome the Chancellor’s belated recognition that there is a funding crisis. Everyone knows—other than the Prime Minister, it seems—that our health service is going backwards. Accident and emergency department waiting times and GP waiting times are going up, thanks to the Government’s £3 billion reckless reorganisation. The Chancellor announced £2 billion for, he said, every year into the future—paid, it seems, by an underspend every year into the future. I have never heard of a prospective forecast of an underspend being made in quite that way. Will he confirm that that is £2 billion a year for the national health service over a flat, real baseline? We need to know the answer to that one. It seems that the Chancellor has also confirmed that £700 million of the crisis cash is a re-announcement of a re-allocation from within the existing Department of Health budget.
In the Chancellor’s stamp duty reforms, he is accepting that high-value properties are under-taxed, which is welcome. But rather than taxing them only on sale, why does he not have the courage of his conviction? The average person pays 390 times more in annual council tax as a percentage of their property than the billionaire buyer of a £140 million penthouse in Hyde park. Why will the Chancellor not have an annual charge on the highest value properties and use that for a £2.5 billion a year investment in the NHS so that we can have 20,000 nurses and 8,000 GPs every year? Why will he not match that commitment? Our national health service deserves a proper funded long-term plan, not just more short-term sticking plaster.
We then heard the Chancellor’s diversionary stunt. He had to admit today that he has failed to balance the books in this Parliament. He is now trying to divert attention with a vote on balancing the books in the next Parliament. At the time of the Budget, he talked up a vote on the overall budget surplus, but I understand from reports in the Financial Times that he has done a U-turn and retreated to a vote on a current budget surplus in the next Parliament. Will he explain what is going on with that vote and the nature of the problem that he is dealing with? We want to get the current budget back into surplus as soon as possible in the next Parliament, and get the national debt falling, but the lesson of this autumn statement is that a plan to balance the books will work only if it puts good jobs, rising living standards and stronger growth at its heart.
The Chancellor’s diversionary tactics will not work. Since he sat down, I have received the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts. Table 1.2 on page 15 sets out in detail how the latest forecast compares with the forecast at the time of the Budget. It gives us the numbers that the Chancellor failed to tell us in his autumn statement. I will give the country and the House those numbers. Compared with his Budget target—it is here on page 15 in table 1.2—borrowing this year has not gone down. It has been revised up by £4.9 billion. Next year it is revised up by £7.6 billion. Over two years the Chancellor has revised borrowing up by £12.5 billion.
The answer to my other question, which I did not have when I started, is that those figures mean that in this Parliament the Chancellor will have borrowed £219 billion more than he planned in 2010—£219 billion. It is all here in black and white—hard evidence from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Chancellor’s borrowing targets are all in tatters. We all know that he has changed the way he styles his hair, but he cannot brush away the facts. People are worse off and he has failed to balance the books in this Parliament. For all his strutting, all his preening and all his claims to have fixed the economy—he promised to make people better off—working people are worse off. He promised that we were all in this together, then he cut taxes for millionaires. He promised to balance the books in this Parliament, and that commitment is now in tatters—every target missed, every test failed, every promise broken.
We need a recovery for the many, not just a few. We need to balance the books fairly. We need a long-term plan to save our NHS. That is the autumn statement that we needed. It will take a Labour Government to deliver it.
Mr Osborne
With that performance, we see why the right hon. Gentleman is totally unfit to be put in charge of the nation’s finances in six months’ time. We have had an object lesson in how not to plan an autumn statement reply before hearing the autumn statement. That was what he expected to hear, as we know because he went round the TV studios over the past few weeks predicting it. He said that the deficit would go up this year. He said it last month, he said it last week, he said it on Sunday. I have his words. He said that the Chancellor is going to have to make an autumn statement where he is
“going to have to say that the economy is weakening, the deficit is getting larger”.
I have just quoted independent forecasts which show that the economy is stronger, the deficit is falling and the debt is lower in every future year. The shadow Chancellor got it completely wrong.
It is hardly surprising that his party has such low economic credibility when the shadow Chancellor repeatedly makes predictions about the British economy that turn out to be completely wrong. No more boom and bust, he said—wrong. A double-dip recession, he predicted—completely wrong. He has spent the past three months betting the entire credibility of the Labour party’s response to the autumn statement on the prediction of a massive deterioration in the public finances and the deficit going up, and he got that completely wrong. People say there is a split in the leadership of the Labour party. They are right. It is between people who get the deficit figures completely wrong and people who forget about the deficit altogether.
The Opposition have no economic credibility and they have policies that show that they are not up to the job. The shadow Chancellor mentioned his homes tax. We still do not know what the Labour party’s view is of the stamp duty reforms. I guess we will find out in the next few days. We do not have a clue what its views are on the postgraduate changes or the infrastructure investments that we have announced. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about his homes tax. This is what the Labour party thinks about his homes tax. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee says:
“I don’t think it’s the world’s most sensible idea.”
The former Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), says that it hits the “cash poor”. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) says it is “a tax on London”, and the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) says:
“Let’s stop calling it a ‘mansion tax’…these are family homes”.
One of Labour’s council group leaders summed it up best when they said it was “completely bonkers”. That is the housing policy—to put taxes on housing.
The shadow Chancellor asked about our tax cut on apprentices. His jobs tax policy is to increase national insurance. He talks about pensions. His pensions policy is to tax pensions. He asked me a couple of questions about savings in the public finances. I was hoping that he was going to give me some suggestions for savings that we can make in the public finances. I have had to do a bit of research myself about what his party’s policy is.
The Opposition have conducted what is called a zero-based review for the past year and identified two surplus assets that the Government should sell. The first is the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre. The shadow Chancellor first proposed selling that in 2001 and seems to have forgotten that it is the only bit of Government that pays us an income. The other thing they found to pay down the national debt—it is in the Labour party document—is a restaurant in St James’s park, estimated to be worth £6.7 million. That is 0.005% of the national debt, so their national economic policy is literally out to lunch.
That is the problem that we have seen in the right hon. Gentleman’s reply. He has absolutely no answers to the economic challenges that Britain faces. He has no credibility and no workable policies because Labour has no workable plan. We are five months away from a general election in which people will have to choose their Government. The most serious responsibility incumbent on anyone seeking office is to show that they can provide economic stability to the nation and protect the families who live here. The Opposition do not have a clue how to do that. They do not have a plan. Their whole response today shows that they would take Britain back to square one. Britain has pulled itself out of the economic crisis that the shadow Chancellor created, and we are not going to let him take us back there.
EU Budget (Surcharge)
Ed Balls Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)(Urgent Question)
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement to clarify his agreement on the European Union budget surcharge.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
Last month the previous European Commission presented Britain with a bill for £1.7 billion, which it insisted must be paid by 1 December. The Prime Minister spoke for British taxpayers when he said that that was completely unacceptable, and we set about getting a better deal. Following intensive discussions with the new Commission and at the ECOFIN meeting last week, we have achieved such a deal. I can tell the House that we have halved the Bill, have delayed the Bill, will pay no interest on the Bill, and have changed the rules of the European Union so that such unacceptable behaviour never happens again.
Let me briefly give the House the details. At the European Council last month, the Prime Minister made it clear to the Barroso Commission that while annual adjustments to contributions were a regular part of EU membership, a sudden and unprecedented demand for a £1.7 billion payment on 1 December was unacceptable. He secured the agreement of all 28 Heads of Government that it should be discussed by the Finance Ministers as a matter of urgency. That meeting took place last Friday, and followed two weeks of intensive and constructive discussions with the new Budget Commissioner, Vice-President Georgieva, and other member states.
As a result of those discussions, we achieved unanimous agreement that, first, expecting payment on 1 December was indeed unacceptable. The budget rules will therefore be rewritten to allow for a delay in any payment. In Britain’s case, that means that we will pay nothing this year, and will instead make payments in two instalments in July and September, in the second half of next year. Secondly, the suggestion that we might have to pay interest charges was rejected, and it was agreed unanimously that no interest would be charged on the delayed payments. Thirdly, in our discussion with the new European Commission, it was agreed that a full rebate would apply to the British payment, that the rebate would be specific, that it would be in addition to any other rebate that we might expect next year, and that, for the first time ever, it would be paid at the same time as any money owed.
It had not been clear that we would receive a rebate, let alone such a large one. No one in the House had suggested that we would. Only my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) had even asked a question about it. Indeed, it was only confirmed that we would receive a rebate, and a large one, by Vice-President Georgieva on 6 November, last Thursday evening. This means that Britain’s payments have been halved, from £1.7 billion to about £850 million.
Finally, all member states agreed with us that the entire episode had been unacceptable, and a deal was therefore reached to make a permanent change in European law so that this would never happen again.
In the face of this budget challenge, we have far exceeded the expectations and predictions that preceded Friday’s meeting. We have achieved a real result for Britain. The whole episode reminds us of the reform that we need in Europe—reform that Government Members believe should be put to a vote of the people of Britain.
Ed Balls
If this is such a good deal, why did the Chancellor not offer to make a statement? Why was he dragged to the House this afternoon? Talk about smoke and mirrors, Mr Speaker—I can barely see you through the Chancellor’s fog and bluster!
Is not the truth that the Chancellor failed to reduce our contribution by a single penny? All he is doing is simply counting the rebate that was due anyway—a rebate that was never in doubt—in an attempt to fool people into thinking that the bill has been halved. His so-called victory is nothing more than a con trick.
The Chancellor claims that the rebate was somehow in doubt, but that claim has been contradicted by everyone else. The EU Budget Commissioner was very clear when he said, on 27 October, in a statement on the backdated gross national income revisions,
“the UK will benefit from the UK rebate for the additional payments”.
On Friday, having been asked whether the rebate was in doubt, the Vice-President of the Commission replied, “No, absolutely not.”
On Friday, the Treasury was telling journalists that the Government had legal advice that the UK rebate somehow might not apply. If the legal advice exists, the Chancellor should publish it. Mr Barroso’s spokesperson, Mr Mark Gray, has directly contradicted the Treasury’s claims, saying:
“Commission position on this clear at European Council—rebate was never in doubt”.
The Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan agrees. He said—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber. I wish to hear the views of Mr Daniel Hannan. Let us hear them.
Ed Balls
I’ll tell you what Mr Hannan said. He said:
“it’s not credible to claim that it was ever in doubt”.
The Dutch Finance Minister said that of course this
“mechanism of the rebate will also apply”
on the new contribution:
“So it’s not as if the British have been given a discount today.”
The Austrian Finance Minister said that
“the amount cannot be put in question”,
and the Irish Finance Minister confirmed
“the UK will pay the whole amount.”
They are queuing up to contradict the Chancellor.
Let me ask the Chancellor this: can he name a single Finance Minister who is willing to go along with his desperate attempts to pull the wool over people’s eyes? And it is worse. The Financial Times reported:
“Officials involved in the closed-door negotiations between finance ministers said Mr Osborne did not complain about the overall bill.”
He didn’t even complain about the overall bill, Mr Speaker! I have here the minutes of Friday’s ECOFIN meeting: 21 pages, and not a single reference in those 21 pages to the UK rebate or the amount Britain owes being reduced.
Is it not now clear that the Chancellor totally failed to get a better deal for the taxpayer? He did not reduce Britain’s backdated bill by a single penny. The British people don’t like being taken for fools, and his attempts to fool them have totally unravelled.
Mr Osborne
No, the British people do not like being taken for fools which is why the shadow Chancellor is in opposition. The shadow Chancellor is one of those people who is wise neither after the event nor before the event. How do we know that? He wrote an article in The Guardian last Friday. It appeared alongside another article called “Labour is doomed” by one of his colleagues, and in his article he set out four tests that I had to pass. The first test, he said, was that we needed a coalition of support, and he asked me about that again today. We had unanimous support around the ECOFIN table for the deal that was agreed. The second test he set me before the ECOFIN council was that we needed the support of Germany. Well, we went to Berlin and the German Finance Minister was central to the deal that we did. Thirdly, in this article, he said:
“The Prime Minister should be clear about whether he intends to take the EU Commission to the European Court of Justice if they insist on the deadline of 1 December.”
Well, we do not have a deadline of 1 December any more, because we did not challenge the law; we changed the law.
So three tests passed, and here is the fourth and final test the shadow Chancellor set us: he said that the interest rates on any delayed payments should be fair. Well, I disagree. I do not think we should pay any interest at all, and we are not, but what is revealing about this fourth test is the number he himself gave for the fines Britain might face. He said:
“Britain could face a…fine of £114,000 a day.”
Does he confirm that that is what he said in the article: £114,000 a day? [Interruption.] Well, he has given himself away because £114,000 a day happens to be the EU penal interest on £1.7 billion, so the shadow Chancellor, who stands before us today and says he always knew the rebate would apply, is the same shadow Chancellor who on Friday said we would paying £1.7 billion.
And of course the word “rebate” never appeared once in that article or, indeed, in any intervention from the Labour party on this issue. This whole question from the shadow Chancellor today is based on the absurd charade that he would stand up for Britain’s interests in Europe, but he gave away billions of pounds of the rebate, he signed us up to billions of pounds of eurozone bail-out, and he still refuses to give the British people a say on our future in Europe. May I suggest to him that he should leave the strong leadership in Europe to us, and he should get on with throwing over the weak leadership in the Labour party?
Mr Osborne
I always knew that the hon. Gentleman asked questions that had been prepared by the shadow Chancellor, but I have never before seen those questions being handed over in the Chamber. Nor do I think his embellishment of the question added much to it. If the rebate was always going to apply, and to such an extent, why did neither he nor any other Labour Member raise the matter? Why was it not mentioned in the shadow Chancellor’s article in The Guardian? The shadow Chancellor says that the outcome was obvious, but the estimate of a £114,000 fine was based on a number of—
Mr Osborne
He says no, but the penal rate is 2% above base, and 2% above base per day on a £1.7 billion charge is £114,000. Is that just an amazing coincidence?
Mr Osborne
Some of us remember inheriting a budget deficit of 11.5% from the previous Labour Government. It has fallen by more than a third. We will get the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility in December.
Mr Osborne
Let us get it on the record that the shadow Chancellor says that the budget deficit is going up. We will wait for the forecasts at the beginning of December and see who is right.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr Osborne
What I would say to the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is—
Mr Osborne
It is around £7 billion when we add it all up. That would be paid for by lower public expenditure. These are tax cuts that are paid for. I note that that is not the approach taken by the Labour party, which would increase tax, increase borrowing and increase spending, sending the economy back into the mess that it left it in.
Mr Osborne
I certainly congratulate Southend businesses on the apprenticeship schemes they run. Apprenticeship schemes number 2 million in this Parliament and we aim to take that figure to 3 million in the next Parliament. That is all towards achieving our goal of full employment. We have the highest number of people in work, but we want to go further still.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The whole country was shocked to learn on the night the Prime Minister arrived at the European Council that the European Union is demanding from the UK a backpayment of a staggering £1.7 billion. The Prime Minister was unclear on this last week, so may I ask the Chancellor just how long before the Council meeting did he and his Ministers and officials learn that the UK was going to be asked to pay more, and why on earth did he not tell the Prime Minister?
Mr Osborne
First of all, may I say that it is very good to see the shadow Chancellor in his place? We had heard disturbing rumours that there was going to be a shadow Cabinet reshuffle. We waited nervously by the phones, but we are absolutely delighted that he is still in his place.
Let me answer the shadow Chancellor’s question directly. There was a meeting at the Commission on Friday 17 October. On Tuesday 21 October, Treasury officials prepared advice for me, and the Prime Minister was aware of the advice on Thursday 23 October. That is very similar to the timetable that the Dutch Government have set out.
Ed Balls
The revisions of the Office for National Statistics came months beforehand and the Financial Secretary knew weeks before. The Chancellor knew only two days before and he still forgot to tell the Prime Minister. Was he not just asleep on the job?
Let me ask the Chancellor another question about the way in which Europe is affecting the public finances. The Government promised to get net migration down to the tens of thousands. According to the latest figures, net migration is 243,000—up 38% on the previous year. Will the Chancellor confirm that his Budget forecast for net migration has been revised not down, but up? What is his assumption for net migration for the 2015 public finance forecasts?
Mr Osborne
Interestingly, we conducted an independent review by one of the Canadian officials involved in auditing their finances—
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman says “Come on”, but there were no independent forecasts when he was in the Treasury. He was the economic adviser who cooked up the forecasts, and came to the House and as a result misled this country about its economic fortunes. The OBR is working as an independent institution. The independent review of the OBR said that we should not extend its powers. We do not want the Labour party undermining the independent institution that has brought confidence back to public statistics.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is right, of course. The Treasury’s own independent analysis of the Labour party’s approach to public spending shows that it could borrow over £166 billion more in the next Parliament. Labour Members have started to contribute to that with a £21 billion shopping list this summer. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor can get up and explain how he is going to pay for it.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me start by welcoming the Exchequer Secretary to her new post on the Front Bench, and by saying to the Chancellor, “Don’t worry—I’m not going to press you on my ice bucket challenge to you today.”
Let me instead ask the Chancellor about another highly topical economic issue, particularly among his Back Benchers. Before the last election, he told the Centre for European Reform that he was a “pro-European”. This week, The Times is reporting that the new chapter in his biography says that the Chancellor has gone cold on Europe—an “unmistakable hardening”—and is now pondering exit. I suspect we may know the answer, but let me ask the Chancellor: what has changed?
Mr Osborne
First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for nominating me for the ice bucket challenge. I would rather make the extra donation to charity and pour the cold water over his economic policies. When it comes to reading biographies, we do not need a biography to know his life story: he was put in charge of the British economy, and he wrecked it.
On Europe, our position is the one that I think is shared by the majority of the British people, which is that we seek a renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership of the European Union, and that we will then put that to the British people in a referendum. Why does the right hon. Gentleman not get up and commit the Labour party to letting the people have a say?
Ed Balls
The Chancellor cannot even convince his own Back Benchers of his policy on Europe, let alone anybody else. Let me tell the House what the president of the CBI said last week. He said that the Government’s policy on Europe
“has already, and is increasingly, causing real concern for business regarding their future investment”.
Yet the Chancellor is flirting with exit. We know what has changed: Boris Johnson has said that he is returning to Westminster and that he is flirting with exit, and—surprise, surprise—the Chancellor is too. Let me ask the Chancellor this. I want reform in Europe but, like the CBI, I am determined to put the national economic interest first. Surely the Chancellor should put his leadership ambitions aside and put the national economic interest first too.
Mr Osborne
We put the national economic interest first by fixing the mess that the shadow Chancellor left the British economy in. I have been doing some research on what he has been up to over the summer. I read an article in the Express & Star called, “Out and about with Labour’s Ed Balls”, about when he went canvassing last week. It says:
“as we walk down Essex Drive to another house (there’s no-one in), a group of boys on their bikes look over”.
They say, “Oh look, it’s Gordon Brown.” Even they can spot more borrowing and more debt—it is Gordon Brown all over again.
Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)
Ed Balls Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House believes the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility should be enhanced to allow it to independently audit the spending and tax commitments in the general election manifestos of the main political parties, and calls for legislative proposals to enable this to be brought forward at the earliest opportunity.
Over the past four years, the Office for Budget Responsibility has become an established part of the framework for British economic policy-making with broad-based and cross-party support. It is vital that the OBR’s impartiality and independence is preserved. That was a point made by Members from all parts of the House when the OBR was established, and it is why there remains a consensus, which is reflected in the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, that the OBR should not be drawn into party politics by commenting on the merits of individual policies or examining alternative policy scenarios.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend so early, but I have just realised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury are not here for this debate. Will he perhaps tell the House where they are today?
Ed Balls
I believe that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is on a visit to the United States. It may be that the Chancellor is engaged in rather more immediate and urgent matters that have cropped up in the past 24 hours, or it may be that he will arrive in the next few minutes to respond to this debate. I had assumed that the Chancellor would respond to this debate. I do not know whether you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have had any other guidance. Anyway, let us hope that he turns up.
In the meantime, and fully consistent with that consensus, it is our view that now is the right time to take a further step to enhance the role of the OBR. I will come on to explain our strategy and seek the views of the Chancellor, so he has about 10 minutes to get here.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Jesse Norman
I think the Minister present is fully capable of discharging any function required to see off the shadow Chancellor. A statement from the Institute for Government said:
“More feasible than making any hasty change to the OBR remit at this point would be to consider this option in detail during the five-year review of the OBR’s operation due to take place in 2015.”
How does the shadow Chancellor respond to that?
Ed Balls
In a second—and perhaps not at all. [Interruption.] Go on then. I will come to the matter of the Institute for Government’s views in a moment, when I get to the issue of timetabling. I want to set out my approach to the law, timetabling and modalities, and I will do so in that order.
Mr Newmark
While the shadow Chancellor is outlining his proposals, it would perhaps be helpful if he could explain why he opposed the OBR getting involved in auditing these sorts of things in 2010, and why he has suddenly changed his mind now. Is it because he is concerned that the public have decided that he has no economic credibility whatever?
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?
Ed Balls
I have not given up, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am hoping that if the Chancellor turns up he may end up welcoming this proposal, overwhelmed by the clarity and objectivity of the analysis that I am about to put before the House. Let us wait and see.
I accept that this reform, which I first proposed last September and has been widely discussed and debated since, is a radical change. This is the first time that any political party in Britain has said that it wants this kind of independent audit of its manifesto, but it is not without precedent. Countries that have adopted a version of this approach include the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and the United States. For the UK, while it is a radical change from what has gone before, we believe that it is the right thing to do to help restore trust in politics.
When whoever wins the next election is set to inherit not a balanced Budget, as the Chancellor promised in 2010, but on current forecasts a debt set to be £75 billion, it will be important for my party and for all parties to show that all our manifesto policies and commitments are properly costed and funded and independently audited.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I am pleased that the shadow Chancellor is trying to build a consensus, and of course he did write his letter in September last year. However, Robert Chote wrote to the Treasury Committee on 15 January this year saying:
“If Parliament wished us to play this role in the 2015 election, we would need a very clear steer in the very near future to have any hope of putting the necessary practical arrangements in place to deliver a smooth process.”
Why has the shadow Chancellor waited for fully six months before doing anything about it?
Ed Balls
I spoke to the head of the OBR last Friday, and I will come to my conversation in a moment. I appreciate the serious way in which the hon. Gentleman is engaging in the debate, and timing is one important issue that we need to discuss today. It is important to understand that if we choose not to go ahead we do so in a full understanding of the choices we have, the steps we would need to take and the actions that would be required on the relevant timetable. If we choose not to go ahead, it is important to understand why we are not going ahead. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s point in a moment.
Owing to its importance, I have set out from the outset to forge cross-party agreement on this important reform. The House will know that the Chair of the Treasury Committee has been a long-standing advocate of this reform, as is the current head of the OBR, Mr Chote, who said at the beginning of this year:
“I believe that independent scrutiny of pre-election policy proposals could contribute to better policy making, to a more informed public debate.”
It is true that when the OBR was initially established there was caution on both sides of the House about this proposal. In the early days, when the OBR was establishing its reputation—I think it has established its reputation now for independence and objectivity—to be fair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when asked about this in October 2010, he said that this was
“a legitimate matter for the House to debate and decide”—[Official Report, 12 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 142.]
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?
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the cross-party approach and the interest, which my right hon. Friend has set out clearly, does he think that one of the reasons why the Chancellor and the Government have not agreed to the measure may be that they want to make misleading claims about the Opposition’s policies in the run-up to the election?
Ed Balls
Were the Chancellor to say that the proposals in our manifesto were uncosted and simultaneously try to block our manifesto from being independently audited by the OBR, that would look as if he had a political motive. But as I said, I am still hoping that cross-party consensus will break out in the course of my speech. My hon. Friend is being too pessimistic. Let us give it another 10 minutes.
Ed Balls
I will talk about legislation first, then I will take two more interventions.
Of course, there are a number of detailed issues to resolve. To that end, over the past eight months, I have had a series of discussions with the permanent secretary to the Treasury, with the head of the OBR, and in the normal course of parliamentary business with the Chair of the Treasury Committee and others, and I want to update the House on where I think we are.
First, on the question whether primary legislation is necessary, in the letter that I originally wrote to the head of the OBR, which I quoted a moment ago, I cited the previously declared view of the Chair of the Select Committee, who said that he was not fully convinced that the current legislation would not allow such a role for the OBR. It was uncertain, but he was not fully convinced.
However, the head of the OBR replied to me in October, saying that he had taken legal advice from the Treasury Solicitor’s department and that the view of the Treasury Solicitor was that a change in the law was required—that there would be a need for primary legislation. To that end, I wrote to the Chancellor on 15 October to confirm that we would support any changes needed to the OBR’s charter and primary legislation, and would seek to help him build a cross-party consensus to achieve that. I wrote to the Chancellor and to the Chair of the Select Committee with a proposal for the amendment of the law, with the clauses set out for discussion. I regret to say that so far the Chancellor has not replied to my letter or engaged in that discussion, but as I said, it is not too late for him to do so.
At that time, the Clerks of the House of Commons informed us that with the Chancellor’s support and an amendment to the long title of the Bill, one option would be to table an amendment to the Finance Bill. It is just two clauses, so this change could be made well in advance of the 2015 general election. Regrettably, because there was no engagement on this two or three months ago, that change to the long title did not happen. If there was a way to table those clauses for Report stage next week, we would support a Government amendment to that effect. If not, and the Government wanted to bring forward primary legislation in the autumn, for example through a one-day Bill, we would give such legislation full support.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
During the recent elections, we saw a lot of public dissatisfaction about what happens in and from this place. Some of that is to do with the lack of transparency and consensus on matters such as this. Would it not send an important message to the public if we had cross-party consensus on openness about manifestos and the figures within them?
Ed Balls
I agree with my hon. Friend, and that is why we support the role that the OBR plays. The Government proposed an independent OBR, a reform that we supported, and in that spirit we want to extend its role, as happens in other countries. It is not unreasonable, and it would exactly help with the issues of trust to which my hon. Friend refers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am not entirely unsympathetic to what the right hon. Gentleman asks for, but is not the fundamental problem that even a shadow Chancellor as powerful and influential as he is does not have complete control over the shadow Cabinet, or even of his leader, who make spending promises that are not part of the finance and budgeted proposals made by the shadow Chancellor?
Ed Balls
I could ask the hon. Gentleman why on earth he thinks I want to have this independent audit: to make sure it is all done through the proper process. Perhaps I should say that. Actually, the shadow Cabinet has been exemplary in not setting out uncosted promises that cannot be delivered. We have made no claim to abolish inheritance tax. That is not a commitment in a manifesto that we have to renege upon. Nor have we made a commitment to abolish tuition fees. So the hon. Gentleman raises some issues here.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
May I get to heart of the point about timing and consensus? We have already heard some quotes from Robert Chote. This is what he said when he gave oral evidence to the Select Committee and was asked whether this could be done by the next election: “It would be difficult but by no means impossible. The key thing that you would need to have is agreement in principle across the parties that it was a good idea to do it. At the end of the day, if Parliament wants us to try this, we will do it to the best of our ability given the resources and the time we have available.” Given that those statements are on the record, does my right hon. Friend agree that if this does not happen, it is because there is not a political consensus? I hope that the Minister will not say that this is about timing but will be up front about why the consensus is not there, and admit that she and her colleagues are blocking it.
Ed Balls
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we, as a House, decide to proceed in a cross-party way today, and in the coming days, this reform can be agreed over the summer, the legislation to back it can be put in place, and we can have independent audits of manifestos at the next election. It is not a matter of timetabling, because the head of the OBR says that it can be done: it is only an issue of political will. If, in the end, the Chancellor—who has not turned up—does not want to do it, it is not going to happen. It is not going to happen not because the OBR will not do it, because we will not do it, or because it cannot be done, but because Government Front Benchers do not want it to happen.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I have some sympathy with what the shadow Chancellor is trying to achieve. While he is right that the OBR should be beyond partisan politics, it is the case that it has not been beyond reproach in relation to its predictions and continues to be well out of line, given what we expected our deficit to have come down to. Does he recognise that this process is not going to draw a line under any disputes over matters to do with economic programmes? Ultimately, it will be a judgment by the voters rather than the OBR, and this process should not be allowed to take it out of their hands come election time.
Ed Balls
Of course, none of us is beyond reproach, including the OBR and including the Chancellor. The OBR has had a few rather sharp things to say about some of the Chancellor’s practices over the past few months as regards fiscal decision making. In the end, of course the voters have to decide; they have to look at the manifestos and make their judgment. In our view, if an independent body—the OBR—scrutinises the costings of individual proposals to check that they have been done properly, that can only be to the benefit of the public debate. Ultimately, it does not take away the voters’ choice, but why would we choose to have them misinformed or uninformed when we could have them properly informed? That is the choice before the House.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Like the Chairman of the Treasury Committee, I fully support the principle, and if we can arrive at political consensus, I would be delighted. At the session from which my colleague on the Committee, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), quoted, Mr Chote put quite a lot of barriers and difficulties in place. At the end, he said that we should not rush this to arrive at an imperfect solution. Does the shadow Chancellor accept that if we cannot get it right, that is worse than doing nothing at all?
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.
Ed Balls
I will make a little progress before giving way again.
In addition to primary legislation, which we need, and a timetable, because there is still time, the third issue is resources and modalities. In particular, who would the reform apply to? The head of the OBR is rightly concerned to ensure that this is a manageable process and that the resource implications can be taken into account. I have proposed that it should apply to governing parties and prospective governing parties. To that end, the legislation I delivered to the Chancellor in October proposed that the OBR should provide independent scrutiny and certification of the policy costings of any political party that has at least 5% of seats in the House of Commons, at the request of that party and subject to receiving sufficient information from it.
I should emphasise that my view has always been that that should be voluntary and that no party should be forced down that road, and that remains my view. Let me be clear that tough, rigorous and independent scrutiny of Labour’s election manifesto is important. I believe that it should be important for Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos, too. In tough times we must all ensure that all our policies are properly costed and funded, because people rightly want to know that the sums add up.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Would this new-found desire for consensus not be strengthened if the shadow Chancellor and the rest of his Front-Bench colleagues admitted that the previous Labour Government played a central role in causing the problem we are dealing with?
Ed Balls
We are trying to have a discussion about an important reform for the future. There have been moments in the life of this House when consensuses have been formed. The Conservatives voted against Bank of England independence in 1998, but in the end they joined the consensus. They voted against the move from self-regulation to statutory regulation in our financial services, but in the end they joined the consensus. I think that there is now a consensus that we should not join the euro, but I wish there was a consensus that we should stay in the European Union, which would be a good thing. On this matter, however, we should be able to form a consensus.
I can agree that regulation of financial services under the previous Government was not tough enough, but I also say that, if he were here, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would agree that he criticised me at every stage, as did the Exchequer Secretary, for being much too tough on financial regulation, rather than too soft. The issue is whether we can form a consensus for the future.
Mark Garnier
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor for giving way; he is being very indulgent. First, has Lord Eatwell joined his consensus or is he still opposed to it? Secondly—this is more relevant to the issue of party manifestos—the reality is that had we done this for the last election it would have been irrelevant, because we ended up with a coalition Government. Elections can have different outcomes, so has the shadow Chancellor thought through how the OBR would be able to make estimates in the event of a coalition Government?
Ed Balls
It would be a bit unfair to ask Lord Eatwell, who has returned to academic life and is no longer on our Front Bench in the Lords, for ex-post agreement, although if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that he could join a strong consensus in this House that included a number of Conservative Members, as we have sort of heard today and read elsewhere.
Coalition is an important issue. Going into the last election there was no OBR, but there were costed proposals in manifestos, and, after the coalition was formed, costings for proposals put before this House through the Budget process were audited by the OBR. I do not think the OBR should be drawn into coalition negotiations after elections and manifestos, because it would probably be a mistake to draw it into the political process in that way. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I do not think it is an obstacle to proceeding.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
In his letter to the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the chair of the OBR referred to this process facilitating coalition discussions, if needed, after an election.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
I hope that in the final part of his speech, my right hon. Friend will come to the same conclusion as me, which is that the only reason Government Members could be against this proposal is that they are frightened that they will no longer be able to say that our plans are no good.
Ed Balls
My hon. Friend, who regularly advises me on my speeches, can obviously see where this speech is going. I have worked hard to try to secure consensus. Despite the support of many influential figures, I have not yet managed to succeed in making it a cross-party consensus. The reason for that is that, so far, the Chancellor has not engaged. He has refused to co-operate with the discussions. He has not responded to my proposals and letters. He has not even turned up today.
The question is: why is the Chancellor so reluctant? The reason cannot be the need for primary legislation, because we will support it. It cannot be the timetable because, despite the protestations of Government Members, the head of the OBR confirms that there is time to get this done and to get it done properly. The Chancellor says that he wants to protect OBR independence, but so do we, and the head of the OBR says that this reform need not jeopardise that independence.
Ed Balls
No, the hon. Gentleman has already had one go.
What is the issue? What is going on? I am afraid that it is not hard to conclude that the Chancellor sees this as an opportunity to play political games. [Interruption.] The more that Government Front Benchers laugh, the more we see the political games they want to play.
We know from the head of the OBR that if an agreement to proceed is reached by the end of June and we can conclude its details by the end of the summer, the OBR can independently audit all our tax and spending commitments for the next general election. It is just a matter of political will. The Chancellor wants to place political traps—through his aides, he very often tells people that he is setting them here and setting them there—but he is not willing to back an important reform in the national interest. What is going on?
Why is the Chancellor so keen to prevent Labour from having its manifesto independently audited, and so reluctant to put his own party’s manifesto through the same scrutiny? Might it be that, as the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said at the last Budget, the Chancellor is “getting into bad habits” by making tax changes that appear to bring money into the Exchequer in the short term but have a long-term permanent cost to the public finances; or that, as the IFS said at the last autumn statement, he
“continues to make specific promises on spending increases while stating that he will keep total spending at the same level”
and that he “can’t keep doing that”? The risk for the Chancellor is that people draw the conclusion that he wants the freedom to make promises in his manifesto that he knows he cannot afford and will not deliver, while making claims about Labour’s manifesto that he knows to be false, and blocking our desire for proper independent audits.
I have to tell the Chancellor and other Ministers that we remember the Conservatives’ uncosted promise to abolish inheritance tax last time around; and as for the Liberal Democrats’ promise to end tuition fees—enough said. My advice to the Chancellor, if he had turned up, and to the Chief Secretary, if he were here, would be that if they do not want to be reminded again and again of those mistakes, they should support our proposal and help us to forge the cross-party consensus we need.
It is hugely disappointing that the Chancellor seems determined to oppose this reform. I have tried hard to persuade him to put politics aside and to do the right thing. Our proposal would be the first ever such independent audit. We believe that it is essential to restore public trust in politics and to improve the nature of our political debate. It is not too late for him to come to the House to say, or to tell his Front-Bench colleagues, that he has changed his mind. I urge the House to vote to persuade the Chancellor to do just that—to change his mind, to stop playing politics and to stop blocking this important reform. If he fails to do so, people will rightly ask: what are they so scared of?
Nicky Morgan
Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that I will keep to the consensual tone that the shadow Chancellor, often with great difficulty, tried to strike. The letter from Robert Chote makes it very clear that these issues would be better discussed at the start of the next Parliament. The reality is that, actually, the Opposition are looking for a fig leaf for their lack of an economic plan. That is the reality of the motion.
Ed Balls
I spoke to the head of the OBR last Friday, who told me that if the House agrees to proceed, with Government support, by the end of June, he would be content, comfortable and pleased to proceed with the reform this year. So when the Minister says that he is against this reform, could she just correct the record, because I believe that to be incorrect?
Nicky Morgan
It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to have a conversation with the head of the OBR, but we do not know the details of that conversation; if he is going to release a transcript, I would be very interested to read it. In fact, the letter dated 15 January makes it very clear that
“To embark on this exercise in a rush, or with insufficient resources, could be very disruptive for the parties and very damaging to the OBR.”
Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that he wants it to be damaging to the OBR? I do not think that he does.
Nicky Morgan
I will come to the overall principle of having the OBR look at parties’ manifestos, but how long has it taken the Dutch Central Planning Bureau to get to that stage? If the hon. Gentleman has the answer, I would be interested to hear it.
Thirdly, there are genuine practical considerations that must be weighed in the balance. The Opposition do not seem to acknowledge that rather than producing costings of Government policies, the OBR certifies the costings already produced. The OBR, which currently employs only 19 members of staff, plus three members of the Budget Responsibility Committee, would need significant additional resources and a range of specialist skills in order to take on such a role. Have the Opposition considered where it would recruit from?
Ed Balls
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. I have discussed every issue she has raised with the head of the OBR, whose view is that they do not provide a reason not to proceed, so long as the Government support the proposal. The Minister is setting out why she and the Government do not support it, but they should not hide behind the head of the OBR. He is happy to proceed; it is she who is blocking it.
Nicky Morgan
As far as Government Members are aware, the letter of 15 January put the comments of the head of the OBR on the record. The right hon. Gentleman has not made any transcript of any such conversation available. We do not know what was discussed or what reservations were expressed by the head of the OBR.
Ed Balls
I spoke to the head of the OBR last Friday, in preparation for this debate. The right hon. Lady, who has stepped in for the Chancellor, is quoting a letter from January. Surely, to prepare for this debate, she would have spoken to the OBR in the days before. If he has changed his views since last Friday and contradicts what he told me then, I will withdraw my comments. Did the Minister speak to him; is he content to proceed, or has she not bothered to have the conversation?
Nicky Morgan
It is not a question of not bothering to have the conversation. If the right hon. Gentleman has had a conversation, where is the transcript and why has it not been released to the House? If he has a transcript, we would like to see it. We would like to know what the head of the OBR said about—[Interruption.] If I allow the shadow Chancellor to stand up again, will he tell us how many additional staff the head of the OBR said he would need to recruit, where he is going to find them from and how quickly they can be appointed? That is the premise of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument.
Ed Balls
Is the right hon. Lady really saying that I am misleading the House? I spoke to the head of the OBR last Friday, and he said to me that if the Government agree by the end of June, we can proceed and these obstacles can be overcome. In his view, the issues that the Minister is raising about resourcing and independence can all be resolved if she chooses to do so. Is she really saying that I am misleading—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions must be brief; the point has been made. I call the Minister.
Nicky Morgan
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, for the last time.
Ed Balls
I spoke to the head of the OBR. He believes that if he is to cost manifestos in time, he will need to start in the autumn, he will need agreement by the end of June, and he will need the details to have been worked out by the end of August. The Minister is obfuscating. It is she who is blocking this, not the head of the OBR.
Nicky Morgan
Let me say for the last time that if the right hon. Gentleman wanted to pray in aid evidence from a conversation that he had last week, he should have put it in writing and presented it to the House, or placed it in the Library.
If we ask the OBR to recruit additional staff, what will they do between elections? I do not know whether Labour Members have considered the fact that what they propose would involve a radical change in the rules governing civil service contact with the Opposition. I do not know whether they have fully explored the primary legislation that would be required to make this happen, just as I do not know whether they have considered how the demands of Opposition parties would be balanced against other Government priorities.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is extremely wise in his observation. The OBR, which is a non-party political body, has said in response to a request from the shadow Chancellor, a man of the greatest dignity who should be taken seriously by Members from all parts of the House, that if that is the will of Parliament, it will do it.
Ed Balls
I shall test the hon. Gentleman’s support for my integrity. In March, the head of the OBR told the Select Committee that if the proposal was agreed across parties by early summer, he would be content to proceed, which he confirmed to me last Friday. Is the hon. Gentleman, unlike the Minister, content to accept my word that the views of the head of the OBR in March are still the same today?
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
We have had a lively debate this afternoon, with a number of contributions. The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) made a forthright speech. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) made an important point regarding concerns about subcontracting all matters to outside bodies. He also drew a comparison between the shadow Chancellor as a consensus-builder and King Herod as a babysitter. To be fair, my hon. Friend did say he thought he might have been a little unfair, although it was not entirely clear to whom.
The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) reminded me to use the expression “long-term economic plan” in my speech, which I had not originally intended to do, but I am grateful for that reminder. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) described this as a power grab by the shadow Chancellor, and he drew out what I think is an important point about the shadow Chancellor trying to instil some discipline into the Labour party. My hon. Friend also mulled over the prospect of the shadow Chancellor becoming leader of the Labour party. I think that is an unlikely career move—but the Labour party could certainly do worse.
The hon. Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) highlighted the fact that the OBR is an important institution. He objected to members of the Treasury Committee quoting Robert Chote, and then quoted Robert Chote. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton) said there is a case for doing what is proposed but that we should wait until after the election, by contrast with the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) who said we should get on with it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) made a thoughtful speech, drawing on his knowledge and experience of the Treasury Committee, Edmund Burke and polling data, and argued that the reason for this motion is Labour’s lack of economic credibility. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) made an impassioned speech, which I have to say I did not agree with—but it was impassioned.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) set out some of the practical difficulties of the proposal in the motion. The hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) referred to hysterical outpourings. I think he used that phrase, and certainly the expression “hysterical outpourings” springs to mind when thinking of his speech. He spent four minutes accusing the Conservative party of all sorts of things, and then said the advantage of this policy is that it would end negative campaigning. We shall see.
In an excellent and short speech, my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) raised concerns about politicisation of the OBR. My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) also made an excellent speech setting out some practical questions.
I think it is worth just taking a few moments to remind the House of why the OBR was set up in the first place. The best evidence for this is the book published after the last election by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), and in particular his chapter describing the events of the 2009 Budget, which was very clearly a negotiation on the position that the Treasury and the then Prime Minister took on economic growth. This was not about searching hard for the truth, therefore; it was a negotiation. That is worth bearing in mind when we hear about the shadow Chancellor being a builder of consensus and a zealot in the cause of independent oversight of fiscal forecasts, because what is also clear is that the shadow Chancellor was part of those negotiations.
Mr Gauke
The shadow Chancellor says that is not true, but let me quote from page 226 of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer’s book. He talked about discussions “rarely” reaching conclusions, and said:
“Sometimes there would be just two of us”,
meaning just him and the Prime Minister. He refers to the current shadow Chancellor being
“there on a few occasions”.
Mr Gauke
I again refer to page 226. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West refers to the negotiations on the growth numbers. He says that the shadow Chancellor was “there”.
We have had a thoughtful debate, and arguments have been made on both sides about whether it is right that the OBR should be able to oversee Opposition party policies. However, there is a question about timing. The shadow Chancellor explained why the position of his party when the relevant legislation was taken through was to oppose that. He said earlier today that in the early days it was cautious about protecting impartiality; now, he appears to be incautious. There is an issue here, and Lord Eatwell made the point on 8 November 2010 about embroiling the OBR in “political controversy”.
The next point to make is a practical one. The shadow Chancellor has long experience of involvement in policy matters and Budget matters. He will also have read the letter from Robert Chote of 15 January 2014 setting out the process. It involves a “preliminary ‘scorecard’ of measures”, and there is a detailed costing to note. It is an “iterative” process and during it, policies are refined and in some cases significantly amended. The important point is that this is
“a time consuming and resource intensive exercise, both for the OBR and for the analysts in the responsible departments”—
the likes of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and the Department for Work and Pensions. This is not a minor change. It is not about recruiting just a few more OBR staff; it is a fundamental change in the way the civil service operates with the Opposition.
The question we have to ask ourselves is why Labour is proposing this. As some Members made clear today, it is essentially about Labour’s lack of credibility on the economy. As Lord Prescott has said, Labour gets “smashed on the economy”. As the Leader of the Opposition’s former speech writer said, he fell out with the shadow Chancellor because
“Labour’s economic policy is nonsense.”
And as the shadow Chancellor’s old friend Charles Clarke has said:
“We rested a great deal on assuming…that plan A would not work, and that proved to be an unwise judgement.”
Ed Balls
The head of the OBR told the Treasury Committee in March that if this was agreed in a cross-party way by early summer, by which he meant the end of June, we could proceed. If the head of the OBR is willing to proceed and there is agreement today, why will the Government not agree?
Mr Gauke
The head of the OBR also made it clear that there were risks involved, and that those advocating this step would find it better not to rush into it, but to do it after the next election, and that is the position we take. This issue should be looked at again after the next election.
The reality is that Labour does not have economic credibility. It borrowed too much in the good times when it was in office, and opposed our measures to reduce the deficit in recent years. Only a year ago, the shadow Chancellor said:
“The problem with austerity is that it chokes off jobs and growth”.—[Official Report, 17 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 717.]
Well, we are getting new jobs and we are getting the growth. The truth is that Labour is making a long list of unfunded spending pledges. Today the shadow Chancellor said, “We have been exemplary.” I could give him a long list to show that they have not. I will give Labour one answer: if they want to restore fiscal credibility, their first step—change their shadow Chancellor.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
The Bank of England now has very powerful tools to deal with the kind of risks that we saw develop in 2006 and 2007, with such catastrophic consequences for our banking system and for our economy. The new powers that it will receive—subject, of course, to parliamentary approval—on being able to limit loan-to-income ratios and loan-to-value ratios for every mortgage or, indeed, as a percentage of mortgage portfolios, are very powerful tools. It is up to the Bank of England to make independent judgments about when to deploy them, because, as we have learnt with such monetary and macro-prudential policies, it is better that the politicians stay out of it.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Under this Chancellor, we have had the lowest level of house building in peacetime since the 1920s. The Financial Times reported a few weeks ago that the Chancellor is “relaxed” about an early rise in interest rates to rein in our unbalanced housing market. Can he tell the House how much a 1% rise in interest rates would add to the average mortgage bill?
Mr Osborne
I am not going to comment on interest rates because, as the right hon. Gentleman should remember, the Bank of England is independent, and it is for the Bank to make its judgment. Let me pick him up on what he says about housing. I absolutely believe that we need to build more homes, and housing starts are now more than double what they were in the last year of the Labour Government, in whose Cabinet the right hon. Gentleman sat. If he supported our planning reforms rather than opposed them, if he supported our approach to spending, which has enabled us to pay for the new social housing, and if he backed Help to Buy, he would have a bit more credibility when he stood at the Dispatch Box. As it is, I prefer to listen to the Labour leader’s speechwriter, who said this week:
“I fell out with Ed Balls because Labour’s economic policy is nonsense.”
Ed Balls
The Chancellor used to boast that record low mortgage rates were a sign that his policy was working. Now, with the Governor warning of an early rise in interest rates as demand outstrips supply, the Chancellor is desperately trying to claim that higher interest rates would be a sign of success as well. Is not the truth that his failure to get house building moving in the last four years is the reason our housing market is so unbalanced and early interest rate rises are on the cards? As for the question about mortgages, let me answer by quoting the Chancellor, who said in the House of Commons that
“a 1% rise on the average mortgage bill would add £1,000.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 147.]
I can tell him that homeowners up and down the country will not be relaxed about that.
Mr Osborne
The shadow Chancellor has got into pretty desperate territory when he says that an exit from exceptionally loose monetary policy, implemented in the middle of a crisis, whenever that comes, is a catastrophe for the British economy. The truth is that under any Bank of England setting, if the right hon. Gentleman was in office, the fiscal policy would be out of control and interest rates would be higher than under this Government.
The Prime Minister and I paid an interesting visit yesterday to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency, along with the next Conservative MP for Morley and Outwood, Andrea Jenkyns. I will tell him what we found: people who had been unemployed now in work; the number of apprenticeships in the constituency doubled; and the Coca-Cola plant, which we visited, putting more money into Britain. The recovery in Morley and Outwood and the rest of the country is the real thing.
Mr Osborne
Yesterday I had a very good meeting in Manchester with civic leaders from all parties and with universities from the north of England to discuss how we could improve the transport links across the Pennines and through Yorkshire and Lancashire and ensure that we have strong civic governance as well. Today’s investment by Abu Dhabi in Manchester is a good example of the confidence in the northern economy.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The House and the Chancellor should know that the jury has just delivered its verdict and the Government’s former director of communications, Mr Coulson, has been found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones. Does the Chancellor now accept that it was a terrible error of judgment for—
Mr Speaker
Order. This may be a matter of great interest, but it does not relate to Treasury questions. [Interruption.] Well, it is not clear to me that it does, and if the question were to be judged to be in order, it would need to be clear by now. [Interruption.] I really think not. I cannot see what the relevance is to the responsibilities of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The shadow Chancellor can try another sentence and we will see.
Mr Osborne
Obviously the verdict has been announced while we have been doing Treasury questions. I will go away and study it, and of course if a statement is appropriate from me and the Prime Minister, there will be one—not in Treasury questions, when we are talking about the economy. May I say to the right hon. Gentleman that the person who worked alongside Damian McBride is no person to give lectures on anything?
Mr Osborne
I certainly join the hon. Lady in commending the work that Manchester city council has done. One of the things I talked about yesterday was what we can do to make sure that cities such as Greater Manchester have more powers, perhaps through elected mayors. We should also pay tribute to Lord Deighton, who is in Abu Dhabi at the moment, for negotiating that deal. There was a good partnership between the city council and the Treasury, and it is fantastic news that Abu Dhabi United Group is making that big investment in the UK.
Mr Speaker
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman, but points of order come after urgent questions and statements. [Interruption.] Well, that is the procedure, but I am always agog to hear the right hon. Gentleman. He can toddle back after the UQ and the statement, and I will be in the Chair to hear him. [Interruption.] I cannot have a conversation as we go along; we must have the urgent question.