Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

The Chancellor has now delivered her Budget, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has published its figures. We have been clear that we were focused on cutting the cost of living, cutting NHS waiting lists and cutting Government borrowing.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

It has been dragged out of the Government that there was no black hole of £20 billion to £30 billion in the run-up to the Budget. In fact, there was a surplus. That means that Treasury insiders were deliberately misleading the press, the markets and our constituents in the run-up to the Budget, when they intended all along to raise taxes on working people to fund increased welfare. Why is the Minister continuing to take the public—our constituents—for fools?

[James Murray]

I cannot work out if the hon. Gentleman is implying that he thinks a few billion pounds of headroom is acceptable, because the Government certainly do not think it is. We think that having £4.2 billion or less of headroom is not an acceptable position for our economy to be in. We had the result of the OBR productivity downgrade, which had hit revenues by £16 billion, and that is why decisions were necessary to restore the public finances and meet our priorities going into Budget.