Tag Archives: office for budget responsibility

Mark Valladares

7 November 2019 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 7th November 2019 - 11:20 pm
  • Lib Dems are the party of real change, not Labour
  • Davey: OBR pulling public finances forecast “smacks of political interference”
  • Unite to Remain agreement will deliver Remain MPs across England and Wales
  • Davey: Tories and Labour writing promises on cheques that will bounce
  • UK growth prospects suffer as a result of Tory Brexit chaos
  • Brake: Labour offers nothing to the millions of people who voted Remain

Lib Dems are the party of real change, not Labour

Ahead of Labour’s unveiling of the slogan ‘it’s time for real change’ on their campaign bus, Chuka Umunna, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said:

Jeremy Corbyn’s claim to

…

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Stephen Tall

To OBR or not to OBR? That’s the manifesto audit question

By Stephen Tall | Thu 26th June 2014 - 5:45 pm

libdemmanifesto 2010 wordleEd Balls wants it. Danny Alexander seems pretty keen on it, too. What is ‘it’? Asking the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to audit the manifestos of political parties.

On the face of it, that’s a good idea. Transparency’s a good thing and surely the public deserve to know as much as possible before we cast our once-in-five-years ballot which decides the next government? The case in favour is persuasively put by Giles Wilkes, until recently a special adviser to Vince Cable who has seen the …

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , and | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

Immigration: a supply-side measure to boost growth the Tories fiercely oppose

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th July 2012 - 8:25 am

I suggested at the weekend that there was one over-riding policy area where the Lib Dems and Conservatives agree more often that we disagree — the economy, and the need for deficit reduction — and that we should focus our combined energies on ‘reforming capitalism’. But of course there are also fundamental disagreements between the two Coalition parties on how best we can boost growth.

The Tories would prioritise implementing in full the ‘Beecroft proposals’ — including no-fault dismissal of employees — to make it easier for businesses to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 11 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: A deficit is a deficit is a deficit… Or is it?

By George Kendall | Mon 14th November 2011 - 8:45 am

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is an independent body, created to help us hold the government to account. It’s their job to check the government clears the structural deficit within this parliament. So it’s pretty important that we understand what is meant by “structural deficit”.

But what exactly is the structural deficit?

The word “deficit” is bad enough. A lot of people confuse it with “debt”, and that’s not just in inadvertent typos. However, if you stop and think, it’s not so bad. ‘Debt’ is what we owe, and ‘deficit’ is how fast our debt is increasing.

The structural deficit isn’t so …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

More power to Parliament over the appointments to key posts?

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th September 2011 - 7:54 am

More Parliamentary hearings before people are appointed to key posts could be on the way as the BBC’s Mark D’Arcy reports:

One of the areas where the Commons committee system has been quietly accumulating extra clout is over the appointments of key quangocrats, industry regulators and similar posts.

These are figures with enormous powers – and the pressure to legitimise them through some kind of parliamentary approval system has been building for quite a while.

Now MPs are trying to formalise their gains and set out an explicit system for approving them – both to probe their attitudes and priorities and to

…

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Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg on the scale of the economic challenge

By Helen Duffett | Mon 14th June 2010 - 8:32 pm


Video of Nick Clegg’s speech to the Institute for Government also available here.

This morning Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made a speech on the economy (above) at the Institute for Government, putting the case for cutting debt sooner rather than later. He said that the debt crisis in Europe and Labour’s “terrible legacy” necessitated urgent action:

The choices that were available to us just two months ago are no longer available. We have to take action now so that we can still be in control of our future.

This evening, Nick emailed Liberal Democrat members with this summary:

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