Osborne's Charter is a "Meaningless Political Gimmick" say TaxPayers' Alliance

• Chancellor will bring legislation to House today that essentially copies Alistair Darling's Fiscal Responsibility Act, which set deficit reduction targets in law
• Then-Shadow Chancellor Osborne was right to call legislation "vacuous and irrelevant" at the time, but is now bringing it back in the form of the Charter for Budget Responsibility for his own political ends
• Coalition has missed targets set by the now-scrapped Fiscal Responsibility Act 2010 as well as its own targets, as research from the TaxPayers' Alliance explains

Responding to today's debate on the Budget Responsibility Charter, George Osborne's tweaked version of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:

"This is a meaningless political gimmick of the most transparent kind, and one that serves only to remind taxpayers how dramatically the Chancellor has missed his own original targets. Mr Osborne was right to call this legislative pantomime "vacuous" when it occurred in 2010, so it's deeply depressing he has decided to bring it back for a revival performance. If politicians spent half as much time explaining how they would cut the deficit as they do blowing hot air about it, taxpayers would have a lot more faith in Westminster."