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Finance Bill

I want to address an assumption about the Budget which is shared not only by all those on the Treasury Bench but by those on the official Opposition Front Bench. I hope that they are correct. The assumption to which I refer is that somehow the country will get safely through to a general election, which most of us expect to be called in May next year. I want to question whether the Budget's assumptions on borrowing will be borne out, and whether the market will continue to buy those assumptions, particularly given the Government's difficulty, in rapidly changing circumstances, in presenting the House and the country with figures that have some semblance of stability. Think of the past six months, during which we have been through three very different worlds. There was the world prior to the pre-Budget report. Another world was then described to us in the pre-Budget report, whose assumptions and figures began to give way very quickly to a clearer reality. Finally, the pre-Budget report was replaced by the Budget itself. As Members have already made plain, some of the assumptions that underpinned the Budget did not even last for 24 hours. I question whether it is safe for the country, and therefore proper for this House, to continue a debate on the Budget that does not have a plan B ready to implement should the Government's trust in the debt market not be fulfilled.