Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)
Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and Jesse Norman(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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—
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?