Alistair Darling: I, too, welcome the statement, and the production of draft clauses exactly to the timetable promised during the referendum. May I press the Minister on one matter on which he conspicuously did not respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown)? The Smith commission recommended that all Members of the House would decide on the Budget, which is all very well and...
Alistair Darling: I continue to admire the humour and chutzpah of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in delivering that speech. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make what I am pretty certain will be my last speech in this House; I am very grateful to you for that. I will not follow on from the comments of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, although I will return to...
Alistair Darling: My right hon. Friend is right. Our debt levels were the second highest of the G7 group of economies in 1997, but 10 years later they were the second lowest. On public spending, last week the Chancellor blamed all our woes on our alleged overspending. How was it that the Conservatives were supporting our public spending plans right up until December 2008? As for the Liberal Democrats, they...
Alistair Darling: The right hon. and learned Gentleman nods. They are pretty doubtful for one of two reasons: one is that a lot can change in that time, and the other is that the person presenting them has every intention of changing them as and when we get to that time. I do not believe for one moment that the Chancellor has changed his philosophy or beliefs from when he told the House last year that he...
Alistair Darling: I have never actually met the hon. Lady, but I will certainly give way to her.
Alistair Darling: I agree that oil prices go up and down, but when I said that last year during the referendum campaign, I was told that I was scaremongering, that I was talking Scotland down and that that could not possibly happen. The hon. Lady should listen to her former leader. He told us that the oil price would never drop below $113 a barrel, but look what happened a few months later. In relation to the...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: (Maiden Speech) It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who makes some very trenchant criticisms of the way in which statutory instruments and legislation are dealt with. It is a pleasure, too, for me to have this opportunity to deliver this my first speech in your Lordships’ House. I had not expected to end up here, but it was a great pleasure to meet so many people whom I have not...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the remarks made by many Members of this House on the importance of the fiscal framework. It is no exaggeration to say that, without it, this entire legislation will fall apart—it is the most important part of the Smith settlement. It is deeply regrettable, therefore, that here we are at the parliamentary equivalent of the 11th hour and we...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, in the earlier procedural debate we touched on many of the issues regarding whether we should consider the proposals of the fiscal commission. In some ways I am surprised that a number of your Lordships who have spoken tonight have talked almost favourably of the Barnett formula. There is something notable about the Barnett formula. One of the reasons that no one has ever touched...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: In relation to the Barnett formula, I chose my words carefully. I said that it worked; I did not go on to say “terribly well” or “extremely well” or “without any complaint”. If you look at the north-west of England, there is a legitimate complaint there that Barnett treats it the same as it does the south-east of England, when their economies are clearly very different. I know...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: Can the Minister explain another point he raised? I am puzzled how it will ever be possible within a reasonable timescale to properly assess whether a measure taken by either the UK Government or the Scottish Government resulted in higher growth and therefore a higher tax rate or the other way round. The Minister must know that most of these matters are in dispute, sometimes for years,...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: I have one more observation. I am just wondering how, in the case of the SNP, perpetual wrangling can be written out of the script.
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, the noble Baroness said that the Government were not going to provide a running commentary, but in many ways that is precisely what we have had for two months. We have had the Secretary of State for leaving Europe saying something in the House the other day, only to be sharply slapped down—rightly, in my view—by the Prime Minister and No. 10. The problem is that, during the...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hollick. I am currently a member of the Economic Affairs Committee but I was not a member when the examination of the tax proposals was carried out, so I do not propose to comment on that. I thank him for his kind remarks on the reduction of the deficit, which only goes to show how difficult forecasting can be, even in the...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I agree with just about everything he said. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. In particular, I am a director of Morgan Stanley, a trustee of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, and president of Chatham House. Invoking Article 50 is the inevitable consequence of the...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth: I agree with just about everything he said. I look forward to him chairing the Economic Affairs Committee and embarking on his new career as a bipartisan politician. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hollick, who chaired the committee for some time, long before I was appointed to it. This is the latest in a succession...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, I appreciate that the Minister did not write the Statement—it is somebody else’s—but it contained a somewhat inaccurate précis of what happened to the railways after privatisation. There are two problems: one is that only central government is capable of providing the sustained level of investment needed to make the railways work. That dried up after privatisation. What the...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I agree with everything that he said in terms of his last point on the problems that all Governments face with large corporations. I also have some sympathy with what he said about forecasts and Budgets. I presented no fewer than six separate forecasts in my time, during a rather turbulent period, so I understood what he was saying. Before...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, I will not follow the noble Lord, Lord Horam, too far down the road of immigration. I too believe that immigration needs to be controlled, but we also need to look at the benefits that can come from it. To put it another way, if he is concerned about quality of life, as we all are, he should take a good look at a country like Japan which does not have much in the way of immigration...
Lord Darling of Roulanish: My Lords, we live in strange political times. I find myself in complete agreement with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. I think that I speak for the rest of the Economic Affairs Committee in acknowledging his skill as a conciliator—the House will be very familiar with that—which has enabled us to produce not just this report but a number of others, which I hope will be...