Fiscal Responsibility Bill

I am not an accountant, but I have never considered accountancy to be purely about the truth or facts. In the companies that I have served, and at times helped to run, I never regarded accountancy as an art form. I certainly felt that a significant amount of interpretation and working out of reasonable assumptions are built into the process of accountancy—it is not based purely on hard data. Having pointed out that difference, however, perhaps I can return to the core of my remarks. I did not want to dwell on some of the flaws that might be in the Bill, but I shall touch briefly on one final one, although it will probably set off some further interventions. I have been a bit puzzled about how the Bill relates directly to the economy at large. The targets and time frames are set without a direct relationship to economic cycles or events—the classic example of the latter being 9/11. Such events can have a major effect on our economy, and have to be taken into account when using economic instruments to achieve appropriate outcomes. Public sector debt is an important part of our economy, as is public spending on an ongoing basis, but I am puzzled about the methodology of fitting the Bill into the management of the economy on an ongoing basis. However, wiser minds than mine have decided that that is the right way to proceed. As I said, the Bill provides a reasonable basis on which to hold reasonably intelligent debates on some of these matters.