Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The shadow Chancellor has informed the House how long he has been working on obtaining consensus on this policy with the Government. Did I hear him say that he wrote to the Chancellor back in October asking for a meeting and consultation and the Chancellor has still not replied?

[Ed Balls]

That is correct. I sent him draft clauses with an offer to reach a cross-party agreement around those. There are two ways in which we can approach these things. We can try to see off each other, or we can try to forge that consensus, and it is not too late. So let us give it another go.

The timetable issue has been raised by several hon. Members. The head of the OBR has told me that if we can reach cross-party agreement on the details of how we can take forward this role for the OBR during the summer, he would be content for the underpinning legislation to be put in place in the autumn. It is commonplace for Governments to move forward on a policy, to agree the details and modalities, while putting the legislation in place. He would be content with that, which brings me to the key timetabling issue.

A number of detailed procedural issues will clearly need to be worked through if the reform is to go ahead this year. When we met in February, following his discussions with the Select Committee, the head of the OBR told me that in his view we would need to have the discussions on the details concluded by the end of the summer. He said that that would be possible only if we could achieve in-principle agreement to proceed by the early summer, by the end of June.

I know that the head of the OBR is pessimistic that it will be possible to get that in-principle agreement, as we heard from the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) a moment ago. If there is no in-principle agreement to do this, it will not be possible to proceed in this Parliament. But I told the head of the OBR that we were having this debate today and that we still sought to achieve that consensus, and I asked for his view. He confirmed to me last Friday that his view at the beginning of the year is still his view today: that if we can reach agreement in principle to proceed by the end of June—in the next few days—we can work out the details over the summer, complete those discussions by the end of the summer, and put in place the legislation in the autumn, during which time the work of the OBR could commence.

I understand the view of the Institute for Government, which says that perhaps we should give up and do this in the next Parliament, but I do not want to do that because we owe it to the public to do the right thing. The head of the OBR’s view is that if the Chancellor and those on the Treasury Front Bench are willing to come along today and agree in principle to proceed, we can go ahead. There is no issue of timing and timetable to get in the way.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Perhaps it would be correct for me to state at the outset that, in view of the six-minute limit, I do not intend to take any interventions. I hope to confine myself to fewer than six minutes. I will not take an intervention, even from the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), whose interventions so far have been a waste of time. Time is at a premium. On that basis, I will make some progress.

I do not think that I have heard a more blatant party political set of arguments, electorally inspired, from any Government since I have been in the House. The Government are going against the grain—

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Robinson]

No, I am not giving way. I have made that clear already, although not out of any fear of what the hon. Gentleman might say. The Government are afraid, though. They are afraid that, if our proposals before the election were properly and independently costed, as they will be—we will probably try to get it done independently in some other way if we have to—it would give them the credibility that the Government seek to deny them by being misleading and by obfuscating, at which they are experts—the Chancellor in particular, who is not here.

When we look at what individuals have said about the proposal, it is clear that it is possible—no one has tried harder to secure this than my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), the shadow Chancellor—to achieve consensus across the House if right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches want it. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), who chairs the Treasury Committee, said on 15 October 2013, around the time that my right hon. Friend was writing to the Chancellor on these points:

“I made clear in the Commons that this should include examining, at their request, the fiscal policies of opposition parties at election time.”

The whole point is that election time and the run-up to the election is the appropriate time to do this. That is why my right hon. Friend started this in October—nine months ago. It is a complicated, difficult process, but why have we had nothing from the Chancellor since? Why has he refused to engage in that?

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Robinson]

I did mention the hon. Gentleman. For that reason, I will take this one intervention.

[Mr Tyrie]

Curiously for an Opposition day debate, a bit of consensus seems to be emerging that at least in principle this work should be done, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although of course the work needs to be done at election time, the preparatory discussions to discover what the ground rules should be need to take place in a quiet political climate, not in the run-up to a general election? Therefore, given that for three years both parties have objected to this, the time to get that done would be immediately after a general election.

[Mr Robinson]

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

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

exactly where we are now—

“you were in a position”—

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

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

I think we have that, largely—

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

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

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

my right hon. Friend dealt with that—

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

The quotation continues:

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

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

[David Rutley]

rose—

[Mr Robinson]

I am not giving way.

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

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

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

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

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

which we are doing today,

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

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

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

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