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Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate. As you know, I have to attend a constituency engagement for which, unbelievably, I am not well enough attired, for it is a black tie dinner in the City of London. [Hon. Members: ““Ah!””] I am supposed to be protected from that lot, Mr Deputy Speaker, so do your level best, please. I apologise that I shall not be here for all the winding-up speeches. Listening in the House to Budgets and autumn statements over much of the past decade has been, at times, a somewhat surreal experience. Year after year the erstwhile Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), rattled out cascading figures for growth and public deficit reduction. As the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) rightly pointed out, the growth figures proved, at least until the middle of the previous decade, to be uncannily accurate, even often defying so-called expert opinion. However, the deficit numbers were always hopelessly, devastatingly inaccurate. Almost comically, although this can scarcely be regarded as a laughing matter, every single Budget between 2001 and 2007 forecast that the public finances would move back into surplus in about three or four years. As time wore on, the debt and annual deficit rose inexorably as the Treasury employed smoke and mirrors to conjure the illusion of fiscal stability.