Fiscal Rules

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an extremely interesting point. I am grateful for his support for what I have set out and will take away his point to give it further consideration.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the Chancellor can fiddle figures all she likes to allow more borrowing, but that will simply lead to more interest payments, in excess of the £100 billion or so that we already have, which will lead to great damage in the market. The change of fiscal rules on borrowing is apparently to fix an alleged black hole, so would the Minister care to comment on the highly respected IFS director Paul Johnson’s statement that:

“The numbers may be a little bit worse than they thought at the time … but the overall picture over the next four or five years is very, very similar to what we knew before the election”?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me an opportunity to talk about the £22 billion black hole left to us by the previous Government. He has done that in the past and I continue to be grateful to him. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility said at the time of the July statement that it did not know about this black hole at the heart of our finances; it established an independent review into it which will report in due course. I think there will be plenty more information on the £22 billion black hole in tomorrow’s Budget for the noble Lord to peruse.