By Ned Simons, DODS monitoring - 5th February 2010
The Fiscal Responsibility Bill has its second reading in the Lords on Wednesday, the last day of business in Westminster before the half-term recess. The bill aims to enshrine in law the government’s aim of halving the £178bn budget deficit within four years.
It requires government borrowing in each financial year between 2010/11 and 2015/16 to be lower than the previous year, measured as a percentage of GDP.
But the legislation has had to face down stinging criticism from the opposition benches, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats having mocked the idea of enforcing a statutory duty on government to enact policy.
During the bill’s second reading in the Commons in early January, shadow chancellor George Osborne said it was “the biggest load of nonsense that this government has had the audacity to present to Parliament in this current session”.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Jeremy Browne, branded the bill “pathetic and dangerous”. “This legislation is not only pathetic, it’s also dangerously wrong-headed. What we really need is a real determination to plot a path to sustainable recovery,” he said. “We shouldn’t need a law to make the government do its job.”
And during its recent committee stage in the Commons, shadow Treasury minister David Gauke warned that the bill would put a “straitjacket” on a future government’s ability to cope with a recession by constraining public borrowing.
But the government will hope that the bill provides a useful answer to any accusations of financial mismanagement during the election campaign..
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd