Spending Review

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support for the difficult steps we needed to take. Our trying to set out these spending plans further in advance, so that Departments have time to make the necessary adjustments, is a good innovation in fiscal policy. The certainty we now have for 2015 will, I think, mean better public policy.

We have set out some of the details of the welfare cap in my speech today, but in the document we publish, we have set its parameters, how it will be set in cash terms, the period over which it will be set and when it will be set—at the Budget. However, it is absolutely my intention to listen to the Treasury Committee, which I hope will take an interest in this issue, and to examine best practice and make sure we get the final details absolutely right. If we want to change the Office for Budget Responsibility charter, we will have to legislate, but that is something we need to examine. We absolutely should work on the details, but the principles and the principal components of the cap have been established.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I was interested in the Chancellor’s claim to have rescued the economy. I think I am right in saying that in 2010, the economy was actually growing, whereas unfortunately, in 2011 it stopped growing. That is why he is borrowing more than he intended and why his target to reduce national debt has been moved well into the next Parliament.

On the new growth items the Chancellor announced today, particularly those relating to transport, how much of that is public money and how much is expected to be raised from the private sector? Can he also give us some idea of how much additional growth he expects to see in the economy as a result of the measures he has announced, most of which, I think I am right in saying, will not take effect until the next Parliament? Given the delay in delivery of these projects—a problem that has dogged successive Governments—it may be some considerable time before we actually see their economic benefit.

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have, I hope, a cordial relationship, but I will just disagree on one point. The idea that he handed me a golden economic legacy and an easy set of books, and that somehow it was all fantastically booming after a 6% contraction in the economy, is something that will turn out, if I check his memoirs, not to have been the case.

To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific points, the transport money we set out is public investment; of course, there are opportunities to lever in additional private investment. He was gracious enough to acknowledge that all Governments have had the challenge of how to deliver infrastructure projects, given the planning system we have and so forth. We are reforming planning and will set out this week changes to infrastructure delivery in Whitehall to try to accelerate the delivery of projects—something that has bedevilled the British Government for decades, and we shall do our best to put it right.