Treasury accused of fiddling the books
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was accused yesterday of cooking the books on the public finances to avoid breaking the Treasury’s fiscal discipline.
Oliver Letwin, Conservative counterpart, accused the Treasury of “brazen cheating” on plans to reclassify road maintenance spending as capital rather than for current spending from March.
The charge comes after the Treasury posted the biggest budget surplus in three years in January as corporate and income tax receipts increased.
Tax revenue increases handed the Treasury a cash surplus of £16.9 billion in January, £2.5 billion higher year on year and the largest for five years.
Mr Brown said in Staffordshire: “Today’s figures show that Britain, as I promised, is meeting our fiscal rules.”
But, Mr Letwin leapt on the move by the Office for National Statistics saying reclassifying spending as “investment” was political in nature as it would effectively excise it from the current budget, thereby maintaining the Treasury’s “golden rule” of borrowing only to invest over the course of an economic cycle.
Mr Letwin said the move was a classic case of “fiddled” figures to conceal wayward forecasts on public borrowing
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat economics spokesman, called for “genuine” parliamentary scrutiny to restore credibility in the Treasury’s fiscal policy.
The ONS dismissed suggestions of “jiggery pokery” with the statistics.
A spokesman said: “There was absolutely no improper influence.
“There was a joint study with Treasury statisticians but the decision to make the revision was made by the National Statistician alone, and its implementation fully accords with code of practice.”
