Charter for Budget Responsibility

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

When preparing an intervention it is always dangerous not to listen to the speech being given—I just did exactly what the hon. Gentleman requested. The interesting thing is—

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Gavin Barwell)]

Which taxes are you going to put up?

[Ed Balls]

We are going to put the top rate of tax back to 50% for people earning over £150,000, and if the hon. Gentleman wanted to win his seat, he would support it.

Instead this Chancellor is taking an increasingly unbalanced and extreme approach. Let us look at what he has failed to put in the charter. He has not included asking those with broader shoulders to make a greater contribution, as I just said. He has not said that we need to strengthen the underlying growth of our economy and improve living standards. Instead, he has made up for all that loss of tax revenue by imposing even bigger spending cuts in the autumn statement than he was planning.

Let me outline the facts to the House. More than 61% of planned departmental spending cuts are still to come in the next Parliament under this Chancellor. There is a further cut for unprotected Departments of 26.3% over the next four years, which is a third bigger than in the previous Parliament. There will be the biggest fall in day-to-day spending on public services in any four-year period since the second world war. That is what is in the Chancellor’s prospectus for his manifesto. We are talking about cuts that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called “colossal” and that the OBR says will take spending on public services back to the level of the 1930s as a percentage of GDP. That is the Chancellor’s extreme and unbalanced plan, and that is what we are opposing.