Spending Review 2020

Lord Eatwell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Eatwell (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the spending review was a revelation. It revealed how the Chancellor will shape policy over the coming years. The first revelation is found in the Chancellor’s statement that

“our economic emergency has only just begun.”

Mr Sunak spells out the emergency: debt is

“clearly unsustainable over the medium term.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/20; cols. 827-28.]

It is clear that Mr Sunak regards government borrowing, necessary as it may be in the face of the pandemic, as a burden on future generations. This is economic nonsense, and the foundation of the austerity that has done so much damage to Britain.

Of course borrowing will need to be repaid—but to whom? Taxes are raised from British citizens to repay the debt owed to other British citizens. What borrowing and the repayment are all about is the distribution of income: funds being transferred from one group of citizens to another group. Mr Sunak has made clear who he expects the funds to come from. The first in line to pay off the borrowing are the public sector workers whose pay has been frozen.

However, in so far as the Government borrows from foreigners, the borrowing can create a future burden. When funds are repaid, spending power is transferred abroad. That is why the OBR estimate of the increased foreign borrowing associated with Brexit is so worrying. Here lies the second revelation. In his review of the coming economic emergency, Mr Sunak fails to mention Brexit at all. For Mr Sunak, Brexit is the love that dare not speak its name. Yet the OBR makes it clear that the scarring from leaving the European Union with a deal is worse than the long-term scarring by the pandemic. If we leave without a deal, the scarring will be twice as bad. Yet from Mr Sunak, not a word about a policy that will add more to government borrowing in the medium term than will the pandemic. Has there ever been a more irresponsible Chancellor of the Exchequer?