Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will make a little progress, because I want to ensure that other Members have the chance to comment in this debate.

One reason we feel it necessary to put the concept of a growth mandate in the charter for budget responsibility is our anxiety that the current Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasury are slightly blinkered when it comes to growth and employment. We know that in all probability, the Chancellor will announce tomorrow that the OBR is to downgrade the growth forecast. [Hon. Members: “No!”] Yes, my hon. Friends may be shocked at that piece of advance news, but apparently it says on the front page of the Financial Times today that the growth forecast for 2011 will be downgraded from 2.1% to 1.8%. The British Chambers of Commerce has also downgraded its 2011 gross domestic product forecast and is now expecting GDP growth of only 1.5%, down from a forecast of 1.9%. Other consensus forecasters are moving in the same direction.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend explain to the House, and particularly to us new Members, whether the OBR has reduced its forecast at any other time in the past year?

[Chris Leslie]

It is a one-way journey, unfortunately. The OBR started with high expectations of growth soon after the general election, and at every stage at which it has made adjustments, the spiral of the economy’s growth prospects has descended.

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[Mr Cash]

I am very glad to be able to follow that advice. In order for the provisions contained in the amendments to be inserted in the Bill, it is essential for the House to be aware of the implications of judicial authority, the assertions of the Supreme Court in that context, and the sovereignty of Parliament. There is, for example, the question of fiscal policy and the charter, which is set out in clause 1(2) and to which the question of economic growth and job creation would be added by the amendments. Clause 6(3) states:

“The Office must, in the performance of its duty under section 4, act consistently with any guidance included in the Charter by virtue of this section.”

I am deeply worried about the legal status of the charter in this context.

As for fiscal policy, I remind the House that the other day, probably for the first time since 1640—Pym and Hampden and all that—the Government passed a motion saying that we were only primarily responsible for it. I voted against the motion—as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and a number of others—but the whole House should have voted against it, because in fact we are exclusively responsible for fiscal policy, and that is what the Bill is supposed to be based on.

What worries me particularly is the inconsistency with fundamental questions that are in the background, involving the primacy of European law, sovereignty and judicial authority. I need make no further points, because in a nutshell, if those issues cannot be reconciled with what is in the Bill, and if the duties of the Office for Budget Responsibility are to examine and report on the sustainability of the public finances, to prepare “fiscal and economic forecasts”, to make assessments and analyse sustainability, and to act consistently with the charter as a matter of law, we are surely entitled to ask: which law will prevail?

Obviously, I agree with all the ideas that are being presented. We all want an efficient economy, we all want jobs and we all want growth. We cannot survive without growth, and we cannot generate the revenues to pay for the public sector without that growth in the private sector. What worries me is that all those ideas are being imposed through a Bill, rather than through the judgment of Ministers who are accountable to the House of Commons, and should not be required to refer back to the judicial authority of the courts or the alleged primacy of the European Union.

I fear that we are embarking on one of those Lewis Carroll-type situations. I am reminded of “The Hunting of the Snark”. Members may recall the phraseology. We know that we want it, we know it is there, but the question is, what is it going to do? I have a serious problem with the Bill for that reason. I fear that we are engaged in a process of wishful thinking rather than achievement, and that we are being locked into a withdrawal from parliamentary accountability—and, as some Members may know by now, I regard that as the ultimate test of our democratic system.

[Ian Murray]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). At the end of his contribution he referred to wishful thinking. Labour Members certainly think the Chancellor’s gamble with the UK economy is wishful thinking. The recent reduction in GDP came as a shock to everyone, and serves to highlight some of the wishful thinking indulged in by those on the Treasury Bench.

I think that everyone supports the establishment of the Office for Budget Responsibility. One of the best measures taken by the Labour Government was the courageous step of making the Bank of England independent. We have all seen the benefits of that, in good times as well as bad, as it can now make decisions for the benefit of the economy, rather than the benefit of the Government.

In the establishment in law of the OBR, the Bill should focus on more than just deficit and debt issues. Clause 1(1) states that the Treasury must look at

“the formulation and implementation of fiscal policy and policy for the management of the National Debt.”

That narrow focus takes us away from what we need most, which is economic growth. It does not even give the OBR the ability to take account of various specific objectives the Government may want to achieve, such as on child poverty or unemployment, or in terms of the impact on the economy of decisions made by the Chancellor and his team.

[Justine Greening]

To reassure the hon. Gentleman, may I point out that the OBR is free to consider the impact of any Government policy on the sustainability of the public finances? It therefore does have the discretion to conduct analysis that it may think necessary to assess whether the public finances are in a sustainable state.

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[Ian Murray]

I am grateful to the Economic Secretary. As I have said previously in the House, she is one of the more capable Ministers, but she does occasionally fail to see the wood for the trees, and I would point out to her that the OBR’s remit is purely fiscal, and its fiscal forecasting may not always take into account what is happening on the ground in all the local communities that we represent.

That brings me neatly to my next point, which is about independent forecasting. That is certainly no panacea, nor is it a substitute for the judgments made about the public finances by the Chancellor and Prime Minister. We need to be able to hold the Government to account on the accuracy of the forecasts and the consequences of the judgments and choices that they make. The Conservatives have repeatedly claimed that the Labour Government fiddled the figures, but that is not borne out by the statistics published by the Library. In all the years before the crash, in only two years did the growth forecasts fall below the range that the Treasury had published, so the Treasury was dealing with those issues. The Government are wrong if they believe that the OBR would have prevented a crisis, or that it will protect us from the consequences of some of what in my view are the Chancellor’s misjudgments.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

If the OBR is such a good idea, why did the previous Government not introduce it during their 13 years in office? But leaving that aside, will the hon. Gentleman concede that if we had had an office for Budget responsibility in the last Parliament, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) would have found it much harder to dismiss warnings about the economy overheating, because those would have come from an independent office such as that created by this Bill?

[Ian Murray]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I get on very well with the hon. Gentleman, so I consider him to be my hon. Friend—

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Shame!

[Ian Murray]

That may not please every Labour Member, but nobody is objecting to the setting up of the OBR. My point is about the previous Government’s record: in only two years did the growth forecast fall below the range that the Treasury had published. I am not claiming that the OBR does not do sterling work.

That last intervention brings me neatly to my point about what the OBR has been able to do. It serves as a strong antidote to the propaganda about the figures that we have been hearing from the Government. The OBR said that because of the actions of the Labour Government, the deficit in 2009-10 was more than £20 billion less than had been expected. It also said that under the Tory-led Government’s plans there would be 110,000 more people on the dole by the end of this Parliament than would have been the case under Labour’s plans. Those are the OBR’s figures, which is why I am so delighted that it was set up—the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) can check the figures if he wishes. The OBR forecasts based on Labour’s plans until the election were that the economy would grow by 2.6% in 2011, whereas the figure under this Government spirals down to 2.1%—and even that may be reduced when the Chancellor speaks at the Dispatch Box tomorrow. So the OBR has been a good antidote to the propaganda that we have heard from those on the Government Benches.

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[Ian Murray]

One would have thought that the three interventions I have taken were scripted across the Chamber, because the hon. Gentleman leads me to the second point in this part of my speech. I was talking about the deficit and the national debt, so let us dispel some of the propaganda in the OBR’s reports. He is welcome to read both them and the fantastic summary of performance indicators in the economy that the Library has produced. This point shows why it is incredibly important that the OBR should examine a wider set of figures, rather than just fiscal and national debt. Public sector net debt was down to 36.5% of gross domestic product in 2007-08, compared with the 42.5% that was inherited in 1996-97. Most of that borrowing was to do with financing capital investment, and not day-to-day expenditure as the Conservatives claim.

[Stewart Hosie]

Unfortunately that is not quite true, because the bulk of the capital expenditure took place through the private finance initiative. If memory serves, the outstanding balance on the credit card for that is £200 billion—of which, under the Labour Government, two thirds was off the balance sheet.

[Ian Murray]

The figures are there for people to see. I am delighted that we have had a contribution from the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) on this subject, because in the past four years of Scottish National party government not one brick has been laid to build new infrastructure in Scotland. They have refused even to set up anything to do with building public infrastructure.

[Stewart Hosie]

rose—

[Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are not going to be drawn into the party politics of Scotland. Let us stick to the amendment.

[Ian Murray]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will resist the temptation to have another go at the Scottish National party in the Chamber, and will take your guidance.

I shall finish on two quick points. First, the level of borrowing before the financial crisis did not cause the recession. Every country in the world was affected, so it does not take a rocket scientist to work out that it was a worldwide financial crisis. The coalition Government’s propaganda—

[Stephen Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I may just carry on, as I know you are trying to get through the speakers, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The coalition would have us believe that the previous Government were responsible for the economic crisis in, to name but a few countries, Germany, France, the US, Japan, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Iceland, and that member of the arc of prosperity, Ireland.

Finally, I want to give a human story and show why there is a need for a growth factor mandate at the OBR. On Sunday in my constituency I met a family who raised the spectre of what the Government’s changes mean for them and the problems that they face as a result. The OBR reflects these issues in the figures it produces, but not in terms of growth. That family gave me a list, which follows on from a list given to me by someone at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs: they have listed the cost of all the changes to their family budget, which amount to a loss of £4,000 a year. One member of the family earns just into the upper tax bracket, and his partner works part-time and tends to look after the children. When the national insurance increase and the child benefit cut—because he is a higher tax bracket earner—are taken into account as well as the increase in VAT and pension contributions, the overall consumer prices index increase to pensions, his public sector pay freeze, the extra cost of fuel going into the car, the increase in utility bills, food inflation and general inflation in the economy, it all has a rather hard-hitting effect on the family budget. That is why I think the amendments are sensible, and why the OBR needs a growth mandate to get the Chancellor out of a hole—because he does not have a plan B, and it does not really look as if he has a plan A, either.

[John Mann]

I shall speak solely to the excellent amendment that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) so eloquently put forward. In doing so, I shall argue why it is in the Government’s interests to accept the amendment. I am certain that by the end of my speech the Minister will wish to accept it and will accede by nodding that she will do so.

The amendment is a pro-Government amendment and would be pro-Government whoever was in government, because unlike the usual party-politicking that we tend to get on Report, particularly early on, the amendment is a highly pragmatic and practical amendment to a process that, as the Government stated when they set up the OBR, was itself meant to be independent, practical and pragmatic. The shame is that we could be in a Public Bill Committee given the paucity of the number of Members present to debate this rather important Bill and an area of the economy that is the most fundamental issue that we face, along with every other Parliament in the world. I know we will not have a green Budget tomorrow, but today the green Benches are largely empty of hon. Members ready to participate in and listen to the debate. That is an indictment of the confidence that Back Benchers from both halves of the coalition have in their Government's economic policies on the verge of the Chancellor’s second Budget.

We have an opportunity to shape the independent analysis that will sit alongside this and all future Budgets, including when, at some stage, the coalition parties are in opposition—although I appreciate that the Liberals are, in essence, already in opposition. It is extraordinary that so few of them are present. If I were a Liberal now—I never will be, but if I were—I would be thinking, “Here is an opportunity, with this amendment, to try to have a smidgen of influence over this tawdry Government.” That smidgen of influence is entirely lacking now, because the Liberals are nothing more than lapdogs to the Tories’ economic policies.

I shall illustrate my point with two examples, the first of which concerns the labour market and issues such as immigration and why it is so relevant to what the OBR is not doing and, I believe, will not do in its report that will be presented with the Budget tomorrow. When assessing job creation, it is essential from a Treasury and from a social policy point of view to ascertain precisely what new jobs there are. In doing so, work should not be broken down to the micro-level of particular kinds of jobs, as policy makers do not need to know that. However, they do need to know about the people who have entered the labour market and were not in it before. If it is projected that just over 1 million jobs will be created in this Parliament, it makes a world of difference if those jobs are taken by young people coming into our economy from the accession countries of eastern Europe, perhaps on a temporary basis, to participate in those elements of growth in our economy rather than being taken by the domestically resident, unemployed, underemployed, retired or partially retired population.

The economics of this issue are as important to decision making as the social policy side, which I am sure all hon. Members will recognise is very important. If the majority of jobs being created are semi-permanent, service sector-based jobs in the south-east, particularly in London, and if they are filled by people from overseas, there will be economic and social consequences. One economic consequence will be an overheating of the London and south-east economies.

The failure to take that into account in economic planning was by far the biggest fault line under the previous Labour Government. It is foolhardy of the current Government, with the cheering on the Conservative Back Benches that there has been, to do exactly the same thing given that a tool has been created that would allow that objective analysis—if it were allowed to do that job. If the OBR’s report tomorrow gives a breakdown of where jobs are coming from, how many are in the south-east and London, and how many are new jobs going to people coming into the country for the first time, that will give us far greater certainty about the economic and social consequences. Some of those economic consequences, as well as social consequences, will be an overheated housing market in London and the south-east, which has previously been an impediment to certain forms of growth and to those who have wished to get into the labour market but have not been able to do so.