Finance Bill

In other words, my Lords, the charges against the Government are conjecture rather than anything that is happening. The noble Baroness will see when she reads Hansard that she has said that we can already see the impact. I cannot see it, because I do not believe that there is any evidence of it. The debate started off with fairly lofty assertions in these terms. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, began with the absolute bombshell that the Government, as revealed today, are about to abandon their fiscal rules. That is press speculation. After all, this proposition in the press appears to be based on comments that were made three months ago by an official in Westminster. Here we have a splendid splash, which certainly gave the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, an excellent opportunity to deploy his oratorical arts, but what is in it? What is the substance? It is the case that the Office for National Statistics intends to review its analysis of the categorisation of government expenditure, borrowing and receipts, and we have to take that into account, but it is also certainly the case, as I have had the opportunity of quoting to the House in the past, that we have reaped the rewards of the strategy that was pursued over the past decade of the economic cycle. As my noble friend Lord Peston indicated, Lord Keynes was fond of saying that, when times change, judgments have to change as well. The one thing that we all have in common in this House today is that we are in significant, changing times.