Finance (No. 3) Bill

Luke Graham Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

Then, of course, there has been the ultimate forecast from these people over the past 48 hours. This ERG has been going around stamping its feet and telling us all that if it does not get the extreme form of Brexit that it wants, the poor Prime Minister will have these 48 letters going in calling for a vote of no confidence in her. As far as I am aware, she is still sitting in Downing Street right now. I do not know whether the ERG has hit the 48 letters it said there were going to be, but the bottom line is that these individuals, who impugn the motives of Treasury civil servants and call into question the accuracy of their forecasts, are in no position whatsoever to lecture any of us on the accuracy of forecasts given the huge, outlandish claims that they have made over the past few years.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about statistics. Does he not agree with me that many Members—this is shared across the House—use statistics as a drunk man uses a lamppost: for support, rather than illumination? Will he join me in trying to strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility, so it can have more resources and ensure the statistics presented to the House are objectively verified?

[Chuka Umunna]

I have to say that when I gave way to the hon. Gentleman I did not imagine I would actually end up agreeing with what he said. He pre-empts my final point, which is that I understand the general worry about the accuracy of official forecasts. The bottom line is that we are never going to get forecasts that are 100% accurate, but we have to work with a certain number of assumptions to make policy, as I am sure he will discover if he has the privilege of serving in government.

On the point he makes about the OBR, I was quite careful in how I drafted the amendment. Its powers and capacity from a resource point of view are circumscribed, but there is no reason why we should not change the statutory remit of the OBR. At the very least, for those who worry about the accuracy of forecasts, we could see whether the OBR would be prepared to do an evaluation on the methodology and the techniques it uses to produce the forecasts by the Treasury.