amendment of the law

Debate between Oliver Colvile and David Ruffley

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

The Chancellor is a fiscal Conservative and monetary activist, and as such he eschewed shock and awe measures in this Budget, opting instead for sensible targeted relief that is welcome on this side of the House. Cuts to income tax mean that by 2015 a large number of income tax payers will receive a £700 cut compared with their tax bill of 2010. On child care, average two-child families with working mothers and fathers will get £2,400. Fuel duty has been frozen, and it is the longest freeze for two decades. The national insurance contribution cut of £2,000 is equivalent to someone just under average median earnings being taken on at no national insurance cost to an employer.

I support the house building programme that we have heard about. As someone on the dry end of the Conservative party economically, I have heard the criticism that it is Fannie Mae all over again. People wonder whether there will be lots of defaults when the interest-free period runs out, and whether the policy could lead to higher house prices because of supply constraints. I am sure I will hear those concerns again, but the reality is that we need an injection of confidence into British households. There is no question but that the ability to get on the housing ladder, including the encouragement to spend money, because consumer spending frequently attends the purchase of a new house, is the kind of confidence that the British consumer wants at this stage of the economic cycle.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the key issue is the blockage in getting money to people and giving them the ability to borrow it in the first place? We expect our banks to ensure that they not only rebuild their balance sheets, but lend money and make it available.

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.

There were no shock-and-awe measures in the Budget, because the Chancellor is probably right to believe that we are not approaching a lost Japanese decade. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the Office for Budget Responsibility growth projections; it forecasts growth of 2.3% in 2015, 2.7% in 2016 and 2.8% in 2017. The forecast turns on one central OBR assumption that might be wrong. The OBR assumes that there is quite a large negative output gap—that, in simple terms, there is a lot of slack in the economy. Forecasting or estimating the output gap is very difficult. If its assumption is wrong, and if the output gap is smaller than it says, a huge amount of the £120 billion a year last year and the coming year is structural rather than cyclical. If that is the case, we will need shock-and-awe measures—deeper cuts than those implied in the spending envelope and, yes, a fiscal stimulus in deeper tax cuts.