Pre-Budget Report

My Lords, the Minister is very naughty because he tries to put words into people’s mouths that they did not utter. I simply said that, sooner or later, a Government would come to office who had to replicate the public expenditure White Paper produced by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon in 1979. He had to clear up the profligacy of the previous Government, and that will have to happen again. I did not specify when that would be but the Minister, above all people, knows full well that there will be such a White Paper sooner or later and that such decisions will have to be reached by a Government in office. The Minister may not be part of it; by then, he might have gone back to the City and be earning lots of money. I hope that he will have, but a Government will have to do it—and he knows that.