Fiscal Responsibility Bill

I am pleased to follow the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), and those of all other Conservative Members who have spoken so far. We are talking a great deal of sense and seeking the truth about the fiscal irresponsibility that has permeated the Government's programme since 1997 but has now come home to roost. I, too, will quote from Lewis Carroll:""When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean… The question is… which is to be master—that's all."" That is said to Alice. We have a perfect illustration of that in the Bill, not only in all the examples that my hon. Friend so cogently gave of the hypocrisy that lies behind the attempt to make us fall into a trap, which was sprung the wrong way from the Government's point of view, but because, as I said on Second Reading, at its heart is a travesty of the truth or an inability to identify the truth about net borrowing. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) and I repeatedly raised the matter on Second Reading because it is impossible to form a judgment about what constitutes public sector net borrowing or the deficit. I entirely endorse amendment 1 to include the words "structural element of". Such judgments cannot be made unless one knows what public sector net borrowing, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, means. Clause 5 states that we will be given a definition in the code for fiscal stability, which was produced in 1998. It has taken the Government from 1997-98 to the present day to undermine our finances completely. Moreover, if one examines all the golden rules, the nonsensical stability and growth pact and its application, and the criteria under the Maastricht treaty for public expenditure, and tries to form a calculation about what our economy is and what our debt levels are, one simply cannot make any responsible decision in the absence of a proper definition of public sector net borrowing. That completely undermines the purpose of the Bill. It is nonsensical to introduce a Bill on fiscal responsibility without defining net borrowing. It is rubbish. The explanatory notes refer to the golden rule, the second fiscal rule—the sustainable investment rule—and I ask the Economic Secretary to acknowledge the nonsense that all that represented in the first place, and the complete failure even to fulfil the criteria that the Government set for themselves. It is a dreadful indictment of the Government—and, indeed, their epitaph—that they have buried our finances under a mountain of debt. They have totally failed to manage the British economy in anything like a responsible manner. The very notion of a Bill on fiscal responsibility flies in the face of everything that they have done.