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Finance Bill

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which has to do with the health of the country's finances. This is another case of, "Do as I say, not as I do." The then Chancellor, who is now Prime Minister, always said that corporations must put their figures on balance sheet and we must see what are the real state of companies, but for some reason the Government were an exception to that. Regardless of whether the sums are on balance sheet or off balance sheet, it is important that somewhere in the Red Book, even if only in the footnotes, we see the true state of the public finances. We see in the Red Book that we will finally get some sort of a balanced Budget in 2018; that is when the public finances will begin to become balanced again. However, we must fast forward even further to 2023—I have an 11-year-old son, and he will be 25 in 2023—before we will finally achieve the Prime Minister's golden rule of 40 per cent. of GDP. That is completely unacceptable. This Budget and Finance Bill do nothing to try to accelerate our journey along that path. My second point is on growth. The growth figures seem to have been underestimated all the way through—the economy shrinking by 3.5 per cent., rising to growth of 1.5 per cent. next year, and then a fantastical growth rate of 3.5 per cent. the year after that. Have the Government conducted any sensitivity analysis of those figures, however? What happens if the growth figure for next year is not negative 3.5 per cent. but, let us say, negative 4.2 per cent.? What happens if growth is not 1.5 per cent. next year, but is only 0.25 per cent. or flat? What happens if we do not achieve that magical, mythical 3.5 per cent. growth in two years' time? What will happen is that we will have a larger black hole, and how will the Government set about fixing that?