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Finance Bill

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again immediately. He will have to be patient. I will develop my argument, if I may. The other curious aspect is this. How is it possible, within the general figure for the Government’s deficit—which is roughly the same as that predicted a year ago and in November—for the current deficit to have increased so much? The answer must be that investment spending has been cut. The Government have said ““My goodness, it will be terribly embarrassing if we breach our forecasts, and the budget deficit is much greater than was anticipated only six months ago. Since the current element of the budget is out of control, we will have to compensate by cutting investment spending.”” I think that that is confirmed in the table on page 30 of the Red Book:"““Forecasting changes to net investment . . . -3.4””." The Chancellor is doing something that he always said he would never do. He is doing something that he accuses previous Governments, Labour and Conservative, of doing: playing around with investment spending, and using it as a cushion to absorb mistakes made in the management of current spending. Again, I fear that the full story is not clear. It is certainly not clear from the Red Book. If the Paymaster General wishes to intervene, I shall certainly give way. I hope that she will have an explanation for the House in due course. [Interruption.] The Paymaster General’s sedentary intervention may have been very significant, and the House would probably like to know what it was, but I did not hear it.