Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

George Mudie Excerpts

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.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Before Members make their address, they should answer this question for the general public to hear—do they agree to use the OBR to examine the tax and spending policies of the major political parties? If Members are against that, they should tell the public. That is seen by the OBR, the Treasury Committee and the House as the main purpose of the exercise. The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) said he would do away with the OBR, but that is what the OBR does for the Government. If Members are moved by the non-existent Chancellor and the speeches from the Government Front Bench, they should ask what they are being talked into. They are being talked into reducing the ability of the general public to take informed decisions on the economic policies of the political parties—all political parties—at general election time.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is speaking with his typical eloquence. Is it not the case that for all the arguments that we have heard about what Mr Chote may or may not have said and all the arguments about timing and what Bills can or cannot be brought before Parliament, Tory Front Benchers do not want the proposal to be implemented because they put Tory party interest ahead of the national interest?

[Mr Mudie]

I follow my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor in not wishing to inflame matters or become party political. We are speaking about an issue that is very important to the general public and a first step to giving Back-Bench Members an input into Budgets, as the Americans, the Dutch and other Parliaments do, whereas we are simply used as voting fodder when a Chancellor presents a Budget. This is a first step and it is an important step.

It is outrageous that we are turning the motion down to protect the OBR. Members should not allow the Government to hide behind the OBR or to besmirch and lessen the reputation of Robert Chote. Robert Chote and his colleagues have carried out extremely important work. Their forecasts are not always right, but they make them sincerely and within the finite probabilities. The OBR is a very important institution. When it was first established, I thought the Chancellor had taken an extremely significant step, though not a big enough one.

Sadly, the Minister and some of my colleagues on the Treasury Committee have taken quotes out of Robert Chote’s letter of January and the minutes of the March meeting of the Treasury Committee. That should not be done. Robert Chote was asked by the distinguished Chairman of the Select Committee:

“Can I begin by asking you, do you in principle support the OBR having a role in the costing of political parties’ manifestos in the run-up to an election?”

Robert Chote replied:

“Yes, I do.”

He went on to say that this route

“does offer the prospect of improving the quality of policy development for individual parties and it potentially improves the quality of public debate in the run-up to an election”.

The Chairman, putting his finger on the real issue, which is time, asked Mr Chote:

“Do you think that you could get this job done between now and the general election?”

Mr Chote replied:

“It would be difficult but by no means impossible”

and he spelled out that the decisions to enable the OBR to do that must be taken by this summer.

[John Glen]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Mudie]

No. I shall finish my point. I have quoted what Mr Chote said, but Back-Bench Members do not necessarily have a full picture of all the details and discussions that have gone on. For the Minister to say to the shadow Chancellor, “I will only believe this if you put it in writing” is quite disgraceful.

Twice, to my knowledge, Robert Chote was asked in the Committee whether he wanted to go ahead with this idea, whether he thinks it would harm his reputation and whether he has time to do it before the election—we have gone through the whole gamut—and the answer on each occasion was yes.

The Minister used the word “insuperable”, which she got from Robert Chote’s January letter, but Mr Chote did not say that the problem was insuperable: he said that the issues that she has spelt out “are certainly not insuperable”. The distinguished Chair of the Treasury Committee lured out of Robert Chote the information that tells us what is going on. He said:

“As you know, Mr Chote, I have been very keen on this idea for 20 years”,

and that was accepted; he has been. He then said:

“Have you…spoken to the Chancellor”

on this, and Robert Chote said that he had, but the Chancellor was not in favour of it for this or that reason. But then—and this goes to the core of why we have a space on the Treasury Bench—the Chair said:

“Given my enthusiasm for this idea, George’s position has been consistent but always unsupportive.”

We are not talking about there being no time to do it this year; the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not want it to happen, full stop. In other words, he does not want the public to go into a general election having the full, objective, independent assessment of all the political parties’ economic policies, and that is a disgrace.