Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Ed Balls and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[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?