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Autumn Forecast

My Lords, it is always good to have the noble Lord, Lord Myners, present. I do not suppose that his Government ever applied any spin to any numbers. He shakes his head. Oh, well. All our memories are failing. Seriously, the difference this time is that we have a much greater, more transparent analysis of the numbers—over 150 pages of numbers. I am grateful to him for welcoming the formation of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and I hope he will be with me, giving it a fair wind in Committee on the Bill shortly. There is a serious point here. Not only are there 150 pages of analysis and a lot more detail than was ever given before, and not only has that been available a couple of hours before my right honourable friend’s Statement, but we will be able to pick over it in the next few weeks. The OBR itself will come to the Treasury Select Committee and answer questions there and in all sorts of other questions in different fora. As to his specific question on the output gap, yes the numbers show that it will be 0.9 per cent in 2015, down from 3.3 or 3.4 per cent as it is now and from 4.2 per cent as it got to in 2009. As to the levels of private sector debt, I do not accept the numbers given by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell; I accept the numbers that are in the OBR’s document. There will be a total leverage in the economy that is very far down on the over-leverage with which the previous Government left us.