Forthcoming Fiscal Changes

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

As the noble Earl knows, alongside the Budget tomorrow, the Office for Budget Responsibility will set out the conclusions of its review of the supply side of the UK economy. I will not pre-empt those conclusions, but it is likely that the OBR will downgrade its historic assessment of the UK’s productivity and find that the productivity performance we inherited from the last Government is weaker than previously thought. The causes of this economic underperformance are well understood: austerity, Brexit and the Liz Truss mini-Budget have left deep scars on the British economy that are still felt today.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, one of the main objectives of the Treasury, as stated on its own website, is to:

“Ensure the stability of the macro-economic environment”.


Few people believe that this stability objective has been achieved in recent weeks, which have instead been characterised by presentational chaos. As my question is not a Budget question, does the Minister agree?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Baroness talks about stability and chaos; let us talk about 14 years of chaos. First, there was austerity, which took demand out of the economy at exactly the wrong moment, cutting investment and undermining the economy’s ability to grow. Then we saw a disastrous and tragically misjudged Brexit deal, which imposed new trade barriers equivalent to a 13% increase in tariffs for manufacturing and a 20% increase in tariffs for services, reducing total trade intensity by 15% and permanently reducing GDP by 4 percentage points. Finally, the Liz Truss mini-Budget crashed the economy and sent mortgages soaring by £300 a month. We on this side will take no lessons from the party opposite on how to manage the economy.