Anneliese Dodds
Main Page: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)Department Debates - View all Anneliese Dodds's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend raises a perfectly legitimate question. This is a complicated area. We are making progress on it and we hope and expect to be able to make an announcement shortly.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
Just as the Chancellor’s claims to end austerity already lie in tatters, so do his claims of fiscal prudence, given the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ assessment that the Chancellor took a bit of a gamble with this Budget. Does he agree with the Father of the House that the Budget was based on an
“unexpected surprise”,
and that,
“news about…tax revenues recently may not last”—[Official Report, 1 November 2018; Vol. 648, c. 1099.]?
If so, how worried is he about Standard & Poor’s warnings about the potential for recession if we leave the EU without a deal?
Mr Hammond
The Opposition try to have it all ways. Look, the truth is that our remarkable record in creating jobs—3.3 million new jobs in this country since 2010—forecast by the OBR to continue over the next four years, has led to a boom in fiscal revenues, which we have been able to deploy. The Budget that I delivered to the House last Monday shows debt falling in every year, the deficit falling in every year, and both of those metrics lower today than they were forecast to be at the spring. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) says, “Inequality up,” but unfortunately for him, he is wrong. Inequality in this country is lower now than it was under the last Labour Government.