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Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review

The Chancellor has acknowledged that we are going to have a very sharp slowdown of the economy at the end of a period in which a sea of household and Government debt has sustained growth so far. Does he not therefore accept that people will be looking to today's statement to see whether he can restore confidence in the Government's fiscal policy through what might be a very difficult phase for our economy? Does he not think that he should have introduced some new fiscal rules to replace the two discredited fiscal rules of his predecessor? Does he not also think that it was a mistake to start playing around with the dates of the cycle as he did, so as to pretend that either of those rules was remotely credible? Does he not think that, when he announces that he is obliged to halve the rate of growth in public spending, compared with the rate that we have experienced for the past six or seven years, such an announcement should be combined with measures to indicate how reform can be accelerated, productivity improved and choice and competition actually delivered, in order to get a better quality of service for the money? With respect, his statement was devoid of any such measures. So far as he was concerned, this was the end of the party conference season. Does he not acknowledge that he will have to do some serious work over the winter if he is to retain even the modest levels of economic growth that he announced?