Fiscal Responsibility Bill

Of course there are difficulties in forecasting, but when it comes to forecasts for the public finances, it would be fair to say that the Treasury's record is not good. I am being generous in not focusing on the spectacular inaccuracies of the past couple of years—a point made by the hon. Member for Taunton—because, as the Minister will no doubt say, there was the recession. However, there is another significant point to be made, which is that those inaccuracies are starting to undermine the credibility of the Government—by that I mean government in general; I am not necessarily making a partisan point—in that there is an apparently systemic bias in the Treasury's projections. We can run through the past six or seven years, but the Treasury constantly gets it wrong the same way, year after year.