Speeches by Reeves.

“Yes, we have regular meetings with the growth mission board. I did not say in my answer to your question, as you suggested, that there were no growth measures in this Budget. Far from it. In the week of the Budget, we made further progress on the runway at Heathrow; we signed off the film studio in Marlow. Jamie Dimon,…”

“Of course, the previous Government took taxes to a record high and saw interest rates go through the roof.”

“We have now made those settlements. When I became Chancellor, there had not been a spending review for a number of years. We had negotiations. We came to the settlement in the spending review, and Departments are now living within those settlements. That should give the confidence that is needed to show that we will be…”

“I was very up-front in my speech in Parliament, when I delivered the Budget, that that would mean everyone was having to contribute, in exactly the way that I set out in my speech on 4 November. So I very much stand by the speech I made. I said in that speech that we were going to cut the cost of living, and we did: 0.…”

“The Prime Minister has been clear that that was one of the things that we looked at, but we were also looking at the tax thresholds. In the end, because of the decisions we made on higher value council tax, property, dividends and a number of other measures, we were able to keep the contribution from working people as …”

“A couple of things. First of all, in the speech on 4 November, I was very clear that everyone would have to make a contribution, and you saw that in the Budget on 26 November: we froze, for an additional three years, the tax thresholds—national insurance and income tax—that the previous Government had frozen for seven …”

“The Prime Minister and I met two or three times a week during the Budget process. That is not always the case between Chancellors and Prime Ministers—I recognise that—but there is a very close partnership between myself and the Prime Minister. We took him through all the numbers and options, and we decided it together,…”

“As you will know from your time at the Treasury, pre-measures is not the final word from the Office for Budget Responsibility; you have post-measures forecasts as well. The post-measures forecasts take into account the policy decisions that we take as a Government on tax and spend, and the OBR rightly do their own anal…”

“Yes, and—”

“Yes, there was, and the reason for that is that the OBR do costings of all the changes that we are making, as well as there being interactions between the tax measures and other economic variables, whether those be GDP, consumption or inflation, so all of this was changing. It was a big Budget—I think we can all agree …”

“First of all—we have been through this a number of times—there was new information after the general election: first, the £22 billion black hole in the public finances left by the previous Government.”

“Those were the two options that were available. As the Prime Minister has subsequently said, we did look at whether we needed to increase the rates of income tax, given our concerns around the forecast and particularly the productivity downgrade, which took £16 billion off in terms of revenues in the final year of the …”

“If you give me the opportunity, I would be delighted to. I reserve the right to be able to take action at any point. I believe the headroom that we have and the changes that we have made mean that I will not need to do that in the spring, but I reserve the right at any time to take action.”

“Thank you very much for that question. The growth rate of RHDI per capita is expected to be positive in every year of the forecast, but you are right to say—this reflects the answer that I gave to, I think, John Grady earlier—that the impact of the productivity downgrade is not just a fiscal impact. That is the one tha…”

“That is not entirely correct. The £16 billion is the result of a productivity downgrade. Because of higher wage inflation and price inflation, there were also higher tax revenues, but higher inflation is not a good thing, because, of course, that erodes the spending power of Government. I would not characterise it as, …”

“Of course there are always other options available. There are a number of policies leading up to the Budget that we cost. As the Prime Minister has been clear—”

“Of course, we wanted to reduce that inflation, which is exactly what we did, as the deputy governor of the Bank said to you yesterday, with 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points off inflation next year.”

“Yes, I agree with the permanent secretary.”

“I said in my speech on 4 November that everyone would have to contribute. We were able to keep that contribution as low as we did by using a range of more progressive taxes such as the high value council tax, the gambling tax and tax on dividends on property.”

“I think the deputy governor was a bit clearer than that. I think she gave evidence to the Committee yesterday saying that next year there will be 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points off inflation because of the measures in the Budget.”