Fiscal Responsibility Bill

It is instructive that 18 new clauses and 21 amendments have been tabled to this six-clause Bill. That speaks volumes for the attempts made by all parties to make this hopeless Bill into something that is useable and desirable and that might deliver some end result from whatever perspective people look at it. Many more of my amendments and new clauses are in the next group, so I shall be brief on new clause 16. I shall also keep any general remarks for the debate on Third Reading, if we have time for one, as I hope then to catch Mr. Speaker's eye. New clause 16 is specifically concerned with commencement. It is extraordinarily important that, before any duties imposed by order by the Treasury on the Treasury are carried out, there is absolute clarity about their impact, particularly on GDP growth and, frankly, public services and jobs. It is important that that should be in the Bill, because the Government, in the shape of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have failed to give us the information that we have asked for in previous debates, not least in the debate on the pre-Budget report on 7 January. He was asked questions that were directly related to the impact of the measures in this Bill and the duties that will be imposed to achieve the swingeing cut of £40 billion in 2013-14. The hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) asked""what is the estimate of the reduction in economic growth that will result from the proposed reductions in spend in the pre-Budget report?"" The Chief Secretary replied:""The growth forecasts that we have set out are the basic answer to that question."" He said that, of course, there was""a degree of uncertainty about the future path of growth for our economy"," and so on, and so forth. Of course, the basic answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Croydon, Central was not the growth forecasts that had been set out—they are, if they are to be believed at all, the result of the combination of all the measures announced over a number of Budgets and pre-Budget reports that will impact on the total public finances in the next few years. I followed up the hon. Gentleman's question by trying to get more out of the Chief Secretary. I asked him if he could""tell the House what the suppression of gross domestic product growth will be as a result of £57 billion being taken out of the economy—£20 billion as a result of tax rises and £40 billion as a result of spending cuts."" He replied:""I am trying to avoid taking the House through what would be a quite complicated economic equation, which no one will be surprised to hear I have not brought with me this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman is looking at only one side of the argument."—[Official Report, 7 January 2010; Vol. 503, c. 303-4.]" I have no doubt that it would have been a complicated formula, but I suspect the answer would have been very straightforward. The Chief Secretary ought to have been—and I hope that tonight the Minister will be—in a position to say that removing £40 billion from the economy by 2013-14 will result in suppression of GDP growth of 0.25 per cent. or 0.5 per cent., or perhaps that the formula reveals that that is the right thing to do and that that action alone will have a positive impact on GDP growth and jobs and services, although, frankly, I doubt that.