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Amendment of the law

The Secretary of State said something pretty significant about future spending plans. During the Budget speech, the Chancellor announced from that Dispatch Box that current spending would grow by 0.7 per cent. from 2011 onwards. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change now says that those spending plans are not valid because there might be a spending review before then. That is the basis of the question. He said that there was going to be a spending review and that we cannot take those figures as fixed. Given what has been promised by Labour, the right hon. Gentleman is now, in his terms, cutting those spending plans by £84 billion. He said that he wanted an honest debate, so why does he not have the honesty to admit that? Then we could debate how to deliver public services in a tight spending environment.