Economic Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:33 pm on 1 December 2004.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer 12:33, 1 December 2004

I am sorry; the right hon. Gentleman has already intervened once and he did not do very well last time. I am not going to give him another go.

The Ernst and Young team looked at what the Chancellor had suggested and they said this:

"Unfortunately, with one hand the PBR adds much more to the regulatory burden than it subtracts with the other . . . The PBR announcement of an enquiry into reforming or reviewing 147 different regulations was announced with optimism . . . the devil was . . . in the detail: only 25% of the 147 referred to tax and red tape issues."

In fact, the Ernst and Young team were pretty kind to the Chancellor, because when we asked parliamentary questions of the Treasury, the Treasury was able to name only one business measure in the 147, and when we checked on that measure, it turned out that it had already been announced in 2000 and again in 2002, and that it was not in the list of 147 or 159. So we asked—