Office for Budget Responsibility

Lord Jones of Birmingham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I recognise the numbers that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, quotes from the excellent monthly publication that the Treasury produces averaging out the independent forecasts. The Office for Budget Responsibility last published a forecast in March. It is obliged to put out forecasts at least twice a year. We can look forward to another one in the autumn and we will see what it has to say then. As to the extraordinary charge of the alleged independence of the Office for Budget Responsibility, I was pleased to see, only within the past couple of weeks, that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has been appointed as one of the first two non-executive members of the office, which is a sure sign that its independence is going to be very safely guarded.

[Lord Jones of Birmingham]

How on earth do this Government intend to meet their growth forecast if they do not rebalance the economy through a quality manufacturing strategy and if at the first whiff of gunshot they still buy German trains and not those made in Derby?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, first, it is not our forecast. These are the forecasts of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Secondly, what is very heartening in the economy is the growth of manufacturing output and the growth of exports. Since last May, manufacturing output has been 4.2 per cent higher than in the same period in the previous year. Since last May, volumes of exports to the rest of the world have been nearly 13 per cent higher than in the same period a year earlier. The private sector has created 520,000 extra jobs in the past year and that is three-and-a-half times the number of jobs by which the public sector has contracted. I really do not think that noble Lords should get pessimistic. We always said that the recovery was going to be choppy but the manufacturing side of the economy is doing very well to rebalance, which is what the economy needs.