Post by borgr0 on Sept 5, 2024 20:40:29 GMT
A senior Labour backbencher is seeking to have liabilities from schools and hospitals built under private finance initiative (PFI) deals scrutinised under a new budget responsibility bill.
Stella Creasy, who has tabled two amendments to the bill, said this would help highlight the scale of debt incurred. She also wants trade deals such as the post-Brexit arrangement with the EU to fall under its remit, arguing these can have an even greater fiscal impact.
The budget responsibility bill, promised in the king’s speech, is a direct rejoinder to Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-budget, which was pushed through without any prior assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s fiscal watchdog.
Under the bill’s planned provisions, any “fiscally significant” government measure must first be assessed by the OBR, a measure known as the fiscal lock. The stated definition of fiscally significant is something costing the equivalent of at least 1% of GDP in any year during the current five-year forecast period.
Stella Creasy, who has tabled two amendments to the bill, said this would help highlight the scale of debt incurred. She also wants trade deals such as the post-Brexit arrangement with the EU to fall under its remit, arguing these can have an even greater fiscal impact.
The budget responsibility bill, promised in the king’s speech, is a direct rejoinder to Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-budget, which was pushed through without any prior assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s fiscal watchdog.
Under the bill’s planned provisions, any “fiscally significant” government measure must first be assessed by the OBR, a measure known as the fiscal lock. The stated definition of fiscally significant is something costing the equivalent of at least 1% of GDP in any year during the current five-year forecast period.
She's holding both her party and the Tories - and any other party that would be in power in future accountable and that's a good thing. Good move. Of course, whether her favoured amendments to the bill are going to be passed is another matter..
bills.parliament.uk/bills/3731