Fiscal Responsibility Bill

We shall see whether the Minister requires any help, but it is good to see such confidence early on. We shall see whether he can keep that up. Having said what nonsense the Bill is—a view that the Minister is unlikely to persuade us to change—we are, through amendments 1, 2 and 3, attempting to be helpful. We are trying to bring some coherence to the Bill. They would not make it a good Bill, because it is still conceptually flawed and we do not support it, but one issue, which emerged on Second Reading, is worth exploring a little further. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) first made the point in an intervention on the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My right hon. Friend raised the question of what would happen if there were a recession over the period that the Bill covers. The first duty, contained in subsection (1), is that of lowering the public sector net borrowing every year from 2011 onwards to 2016; the second duty, in subsection (2), deals with halving public sector net borrowing from 2010 to 2014; and my right hon. Friend asked, "What about automatic stabilisers? What happens in the course of a recession—were one to happen?" I appreciate that the Government are not predicting a recession, but then again they did not predict the most recent recession, either. That point was pursued by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), who intervened later in the debate, again on the Chancellor, and essentially asked, "What would have happened if this legislation had been in place over the last few years? Would the Chancellor have been free to bail out the banks?" Let us remember that this Bill represents a flagship policy: this is how the Government are to acquire credibility on the issue, because they are legislating to reduce borrowing. The Chancellor, in response to the question about whether he would be free to bail out the banks or be hamstrung by the legislation, said:""No, because the Chancellor would quite obviously have to come back to the House if circumstances were as severe as those that pertained a couple of years ago. I do not think that anybody would argue for getting ourselves into a position through legislation where the Government were completely hamstrung and could not effectively govern the country. That would be nonsense."—[Official Report, 5 January 2010; Vol. 503, c. 70.]" That seems to be a reasonable answer, but it entirely undermines the legislation that the Chancellor was advocating. Not only is it quite striking that the only people to speak in support of the Bill on Second Reading were Ministers, it seems fairly clear that even they were not exactly enthusiastic about its terms.