Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Debate between Gary Streeter and George Mudie

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I want to bring a different point of view to this debate, and a point of principle. I am against this motion in principle, and I hope to clearly set out why. First, however, may I gently say that if I were compiling a list of colleagues in this House who had the skills-mix to bring together a cross-party consensus, I am not sure the shadow Chancellor would be top of my list, in the same way as I would not want to invite King Herod to babysit my children. [Interruption.] I apologise if that is a little harsh, but that idea did not ring true on the Government Benches.

This debate is about restoring the British electorate’s lost credibility and trust in the political classes, and certainly after our disastrous decision—as I now see it—in 2003 to go to war on a false premise, and after the expenses scandal of 2009, there is no doubt that credibility and trust do need to be restored. I have to say that I do not think this motion is the way to do it, however, because we will never restore trust in ourselves if we are constantly contracting-out to a third party our credibility and integrity. If we are not careful, we will simply become elected go-betweens buying in ideas and policies from independent sources. We have to build up a track record of trustworthiness in our own right.

The message the motion sends to the British electorate is that we do not trust ourselves in the run-up to next May’s elections to tell them the truth about our financial plans. That is what we are saying; the message we are sending out is that we do not trust ourselves. If we do not trust ourselves to send out a message of credibility and integrity, why on earth should we expect the electorate to have any trust in us? We may have access to the finest brains in the country, who can help to shape our spending plans; none the less, we still cannot be trusted to ensure that those plans are accurate, so we have to get them independently verified. The motion edges us towards accepting that nobody can ever trust a politician on anything without independent verification. I do not want to go there. That is a very slippery slope that I do not want to go down.

The trouble with subcontracting out to independent organisations is that it undermines the very essence of our democracy: accountability. If my electorate do not like me, they can remove me. They might well do so next May—we will see—but at least I am accountable to them. I am afraid that the OBR is not accountable to them. So the answer to the lack of trust in British politics is not to subcontract out our veracity. The answer—it will take a lot of hard work—is simply to tell the truth and stick with it; to make promises and keep them; to check our figures again and again before we set them out, and to make sure they are accurate.

[Mr George Mudie (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I am listening intently to the hon. Gentleman. He is saying that the House should not subcontract out; is he saying the same of the Government? If he is saying to the Opposition parties that the OBR cannot vet economic policies, presumably, the same goes for the Government. Is he confirming, therefore, that he would do away with the OBR?

[Mr Streeter]

I was about to make the point that I hope the OBR will be only a temporary institution. I am probably the only person who thinks that. I was first elected to this House in 1992—not a million years after when the hon. Gentleman was first elected—and my recollection is that, 22 years ago, Treasury figures were trusted and taken almost as gospel. I am not pinning the blame on any particular Government, but the history of certain previous Governments massaging figures and forecasts and announcing the same money over and over again as though it was new money has completely undermined confidence in Treasury forecasts and credibility. Of course, we have also had the 2007-08 crash.

There is no doubt that the OBR has helped to restore confidence in and the credibility of Treasury figures, not among our electorate, most of whom have never heard of it—they would not know what it was if it hit them in the face—but among opinion-formers and commentators. However, I hope that it is a temporary solution and that we can in due course work our way back to good old-fashioned professional Treasury trustworthiness, like welcoming back an old friend.

The second reason why I will oppose the motion is that doing this right now would probably mess up the OBR. Changing its mandate would undermine the important work it is already carrying out. Other experienced groups—the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs—pore over our manifestos in the run-up to an election, and they will communicate their findings to the electorate, as they always have done. Why not ask this question? Why stop at the OBR and our financial plans? If we are to subcontract out our veracity, why stop there? Why not ask the Electoral Commission to verify our constitutional proposals? Why not invite NHS England to review our health policies? Why not invite the United Nations to oversee the section in our manifestos on foreign policy? Where will all this end? There is no point in continuing down this road, unless we are saying that although we are elected to do a certain job—to take decisions and to make ourselves accountable to the electorate for the promises we make and the decisions we take—we do not wish to do it any longer.

If I am saying that this is not the right way to restore lost confidence and trust, what is? Most of us recognise over our lifetimes that when a reputation is lost, it takes a long time to put it right and a long period of penance. But there is no short-cut: it is about doing the right thing and sticking with it. In our case, it is about saying one thing and doing it: delivering on our promises, testing our figures before we release them—transparency is the key to this—and collectively showing our workings and not just the end policy. There is no short-cut. We have to slog our way back to respectability.

I understand the reasons behind the motion, but I really believe that it is ill-conceived and would not help us to restore credibility and lost trust and confidence among the British electorate.