Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

It would be a little strange, but the shadow Chancellor and the Opposition have woken up to the need to rebuild their fiscal credibility as the election approaches. Of course they had 13 years to introduce an Office for Budget Responsibility, but no move was made.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm how much more the Government are borrowing compared with what they planned?

[Nicky Morgan]

A lot less than the Labour party would have done had it been in government—[Interruption.] I thank the shadow Chancellor for the applause; that is very kind.

The creation of the OBR has meant that for the first time we have a truly independent assessment of the state of the nation’s finances. As the Chancellor noted in his Budget this March, it is to its credit that

“we now take it for granted that the figures presented at this Dispatch Box are not fiddled but fair and independent.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 781.]

By giving the OBR power to produce the official forecast, we have managed to remove many of the risks of the past and put the UK’s fiscal policy at the cutting edge of international best practice. The IMF said that

“strong fiscal institutions can enhance the credibility of consolidation plans”

and the shadow Chancellor wrote to Robert Chote affirming:

“Over the last three years, the Office for Budget Responsibility has become an established part of the framework of British economic policy with broad-based and cross-party support.”

I am sure that—it is not often I say this—we all agree wholeheartedly with the shadow Chancellor. It is also worth reminding right hon. and hon. Members that when the OBR was set up four years ago, it was deliberately designed to ensure that it would be independent and could steer clear of political wrangling. That independence and impartiality is crucial.

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[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I agree with some bits in the speech the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has just made.

[David Mowat]

The last bit!

[Debbie Abrahams]

Certainly not the last bit. Last month’s elections were a wake-up call for all of us, and if we do not heed it, the future of politics will not look good. Far too many people feel completely disfranchised from politics and do not trust politicians. Too many people either stayed at home or cast their vote for a protest party. That is why I fully support the motion for the OBR to independently audit the spending and tax commitments of the main political parties in next year’s general election.

Undertaking that analysis would be a major step forward to help increase openness and transparency in politics. It would enable proper scrutiny and debate on the spending plans of all political parties, and enhance the democratic process. Ultimately, it would contribute to informed decision making, which is surely what we should all want. We are here as public servants to reflect issues in our constituencies and to develop policies that respond to those issues. Communicating our policies is part of our job. That is certainly the form of politics that Opposition Members want to develop.

This proposal is part of a process of addressing the major power imbalances and associated inequalities in our country, and we are absolutely determined to tackle it. We will continue to stand up to powerful vested interests, from media barons to the big energy companies. Information is power, and having information about how the Government or political parties intend to spend public money is very powerful.

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

To deny information to the public is absolutely shameful, and that is where the problem lies. Other parties do not want to change; they want the status quo. They want to preside over a country where there is growing inequality. The average person will have £1,600 a year less in their pocket next year compared with 2010, and the average family has lost £974 since 2010 because of the tax and benefit changes, but bank bonuses have soared and the top-to-bottom pay ratio for FTSE 100 companies stands at 300:1. The Government are presiding over such inequalities.

[Sheila Gilmore]

If we propose policies, as the Leader of the Opposition did last week on the provision of training opportunities for young people, it is clearly important for the public to understand that the policies will cost what we say they will cost, and surely this proposal would help.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. That is my major argument. I cannot understand any party not wanting to provide information to enable people to make informed decisions.

[Simon Kirby]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Go on then. The hon. Gentleman has enticed me to give way.

[Simon Kirby]

Why does the hon. Lady suppose that we did not have an office for budget responsibility during the 13 years of the previous Government to provide the very transparency and credibility that she is now so keen on?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am very grateful that we have an OBR now, but we should focus on how we use it.

To return to the current and growing inequalities under this Government, recent research on life expectancy has shown that people in Manchester are twice as likely as people in Wokingham to die early, and the figures are getting worse. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) famously said:

“Inequality in health is the worst inequality of all. There is no more serious inequality than knowing that you’ll die sooner because you’re badly off”.

That is what is happening under this Government.

This Government are grossly unfair and unjust: they protect their own self-interest, they are out of touch and they are out of time. Should we be elected in 2015, we have said that we will not borrow more for day-to-day spending. In stark contrast to this Government, our decisions on how we spend resources will be based on fairness, justice and evidence.

We want our spending plans to be independently verified to make sure that they are robust. After all, that is what happens not just in the US, but in Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. I invite those who wish to enhance the democratic process and not to stifle it, as well as those who want a Britain for the many and not for the few, to join us in the Aye Lobby.

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[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Let me start with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He is a very clever man—he went to public school, I believe—but he was being deliberately obtuse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) pointed out, he suggested that somehow the OBR would have to take account of every possible nuance and potential spending commitment that a shadow Minister might make at an obscure public meeting in a village hall in some obscure little village, perhaps in North East Somerset. Perhaps he has not had time—he is a very busy man—to read the motion tabled by the Labour party, but as my hon. Friend pointed out, we are asking the OBR to audit the manifesto, not inadvertent comments that may have been made off the cuff at an obscure meeting in a village hall in North East Somerset.

The Minister had the temerity—I will put it like that—to suggest that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor was using this proposition as a fig leaf. How dare she! If anybody is responsible for indulging in trying to use a fig leaf, it is the Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government Front-Bench team. They suggested that somehow the OBR could not manage this proposal and that it would be unable to scrutinise things as an independent body. They said, “It is a new organisation, it is very young and it couldn’t quite manage it; let’s get the general election out of the way first.” However, members of the Treasury team know full well that our propositions are properly costed and would be doable. This is about the sort of country and society we want, and perhaps about the ideology and values that underpin Labour, compared with those that underpin the Government.

The truth—this is no coincidence—is that the Chancellor is not here because he is frightened. If I may quote the words of the late Margaret Thatcher, he is

“Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Could not take it? Cannot stand it?”—[Official Report, 19 April 1983; Vol. 41, c. 159.]

That would be especially so if the Labour proposition was actually subject to an independent audit by the OBR. That is the real reason why the Government are opposing the Labour motion.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Is this not also about wanting to maintain the status quo, and is it not revealing what that says about the Government and their political priorities?

[Chris Williamson]

Very much so. For all the great talk about a different approach to politics that the Prime Minister suggested he wanted to herald in, this is the very worst of the old politics.

The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) thought the proposal a bad idea in principle, but the British people deserve better than what they have had, and they certainly deserve better than what they get from the Conservatives. Routinely, what we see from Conservative Members, with their friends in the right-wing media, is a hysterical outpouring of misrepresentation of Labour manifesto proposals.

I remember Labour’s “double whammy” of tax and spend that the Conservatives used in 1992, and the VAT bombshell and all that nonsense, when we had actually gone to some lengths to be straight and honest with the British public and produce a shadow Budget. Yes, it was clear there would have been some tax increases, but they would have been for the richest people in society; eight out of 10 people would have benefited from Labour’s shadow Budget, but that was not what the Conservatives said or what was portrayed by the right-wing media. Had we had the opportunity of an independent audit of that shadow Budget, it would have been clear that the Conservatives were misrepresenting—or not, as the case might be—Labour’s proposals.

I understand why the Government are trying to resist the motion, but I want to see our proposals audited. On housing, for example, instead of giving billions of pounds to private landlords, it would be better value to invest that money in building houses for people. Surely, that would be a better use of money. It would be good for the OBR to scrutinise and audit that.