Fiscal Responsibility Bill

I am grateful for that intervention. I look forward to reading on tomorrow's blogs reports of the mobile phone conversation in which the Government's Chief Whip explains exactly what he is going to do. I believe that he has a habit of making such phone calls on trains. This Bill is a distraction policy. The idea that the existence of a target somehow provides credibility in itself is ridiculous, even if it is a target devised by the people who brought us, and broke, the golden rule. I suppose that we should be grateful that there is some acknowledgement of the credibility problem, given that the Prime Minister is currently going through one of his bouts of total denial as to the need to address public spending in this area, but that is very little comfort. Let us not ignore the intellectual confusion at the heart of the Bill, which has been brought out by several speakers, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran—we hope that she is safe. It is not often, I suspect, that those two Members agree on much. Nevertheless, the point has to be made. In the past couple of years, the Government have argued that nothing could be done to reduce the deficit until the recovery was well under way; that notwithstanding the record levels of borrowing, fiscal policy could continue to be used to counteract the recession; and that it was appropriate to have a discretionary fiscal stimulus through a temporary cut in VAT. Now, however, we have a Bill that means that from 2011 to 2016 borrowing must fall year in, year out, regardless of the economic circumstances and where we are in the economic cycle. Never mind the discretionary fiscal stimulus—this could preclude even the use of the automatic stabilisers, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham pointed out. Does that mean that the Government now believe that we have borrowed so much, and will continue to do so; that we do not have room for manoeuvre; and that once we are through a general election the fiscal levers will not be available for at least six years?