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The Budget

I will endeavour to conclude my remarks by 4.15 at the very latest, to ensure that the hon. Member for Islwyn gets an equal amount of time. That may well reduce the amount of time that I can take for interventions. The most important aspect of the Budget has been rather missed in the debate; all the Budget forecasts that we are looking at are, for the first time, made by an independent body. As we heard during the Budget debate in the House, the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility stimulates Labour Members to talk about whether there has been, as there has been, a revision of the growth forecast for the next year or so—although further revisions have indicated that there might be larger growth later. Those forecasts are, however, not Treasury or the Chancellor’s ones, but independent. They make for a different background to what we saw over the past decade. The right hon. Member for Neath stimulated me to look back in the break at some of the halcyon golden days of the Labour Government. I have some of the remarks—