- 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."
Media contacts
Andy Silvester
Campaign Director, TaxPayers' Alliance
[email protected]
24-hour media hotline: 07795 084 113
Notes to editors
1. Founded in 2004 by Matthew Elliott and now with 80,000 supporters, the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) fights to reform taxes, cut spending and protect taxpayers. Find out more about the TaxPayers' Alliance at www.taxpayersalliance.com2. Alex Wild, Research Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, shows that the Chancellor missed the targets set for him by Alistair Darling in 2010 as well as his own deficit reduction targets. More detail and information on the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2010 can be found here: http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/osborne_s_panto_an_exercise_in_politics_not_prudence