Office for Budget Responsibility

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Sir Alan will give evidence to the Treasury Committee when it is formed, but one of the things that the Office for Budget Responsibility will do is cost Budget measures, including the impact of tax and spending changes. That will revolutionise how Budgets are put together, as well as how the House can scrutinise them, because hon. Members will be able to see that the costings are independently verified, rather than being ones that the Chancellor has signed off.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the greater transparency that today’s report involves. It shows us that the recovery is genuinely fragile. When I spoke just last week to a company in my constituency in one of the sectors in which Britain leads the world—bio-pharmaceuticals—I was told that manufacturing investment had been moved to countries that were investing publicly in their companies, including from Britain, where it was not possible to secure such investments. How will the Chancellor’s Government ensure that such disinvestment, caused by a lack of public support, does not continue to create more unemployment and a weaker recovery for Britain?

[Mr Osborne]

First, let me thank the hon. Lady for welcoming the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility—I should have thanked the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) for that as well. The change is a genuinely revolutionary step forward in the making of Budgets that fits with a wider agenda of trying to bring more transparency to the way that the Government do their business. On the point about investment, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) is right to point out that there was a fairly dramatic fall in investment under the Government whom she supported, but I would say this: the sustainable answer to the problem is a strong private sector recovery, and that is what we all have to work towards.