Office for Budget Responsibility

Lord Jones of Birmingham Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

The forecasts are transparent; people have been able to see how it has formed its views on all its forecasts. As for Treasury Ministers in the past, they have plucked numbers out and it has been non-transparent. Here we have a degree of transparency by which you can hold the Treasury to account, going forward. The noble Lord also asked whether the five-year forecasts will be amended very regularly. Certainly, the OBR will be publishing in conjunction with the Budget again, and, as it said in its document and terms of reference, it will be publishing its forecasts regularly.

[Lord Jones of Birmingham]

My Lords, we have just witnessed a great display of who said what to whom, and of “Oh yes he did” and “Oh no he didn’t”, that would frustrate every businessman and woman in this country, because—I hope that the Minister will comment on this—without doubt, whoever is right or wrong, this country is in the economic dippy-doo. The only way out of this is to trade our way out, to generate the wealth that will create the jobs in the private sector and generate the taxation to pay down the deficit.

When the Minister was repeating what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said in another place, at the end I heard that next week we are going to hear what he intends to do about it. I urge the Minister to go back to his colleagues and, whatever they do next week and however or whenever they cut—when we hear so much about public spending, of how much or how little we are going to spend and, at the end of the day, of ring-fencing it or cutting it more quickly—to ask whether anybody has ever thought about earning the stuff, because without earning it you cannot cut it. I would welcome a comment on what we are going to do about generating the business growth that will render all of this at least relevant.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, raises a critical point: how are we going to get growth going again, as none of this public expenditure gets paid for unless we get the private sector economy growing strongly? While my right honourable friend the Chancellor will be setting out in his Budget next week the important strands of our growth strategy, I stress that what is so critical about the creation of the OBR and the early action that was taken on the initial £6 billion of cuts is the credibility that gives to the new Government’s plans to grip the appalling economic situation we have inherited. That has already started to give confidence to the markets, as has been seen in the low interest rates. The critical importance of keeping interest rates low has to be one of the first foundations on which we can rebuild sustainable growth in the private sector.