The first of the Tories' financial reforms

Pete

“We will call time on Gordon Brown's age of financial irresponsibility and put in place an independent system that will allow a referee, if you like, to show a yellow card to a Chancellor and Prime Minister if they are stepping out of line.”

Am I the only one that thinks that this is a load of gobble-de-gook?

Is this supposed to make me want to vote for them?

Maybe there is a political party out there wanting my vote that speaks my language!

Nick Kaplan

Surely the significance of this is that it will also stop future Labour governments overspending, given that it would be virtually impossible to remove.

Verity

Writes Fraser plaintively: "If Cameron doesn’t want to borrow above a certain amount, can’t he just pledge not to in his manifesto?"

It doesn't sound tricky and busy enough.

Also any government minister who uses football analogies to talk about important things like national budgets and debt is someone who should not be on the front bench. And why does he address only men? He doesn't understand that women pay taxes? Or he thinks that women relate to football analogies ... because he didn't bother to think his quote through, meaning he's inept on several levels simultaneously?

I already know this programme is going to fail.

jon

How about publishing honest statistics? National debt plus northern rock plus bradford and bingley plus pfi plus pension liabilities? Unemployment plus incapacity plus carers plus disability? Then make policy with honest figures? Civil service hiring freeze, immigration freeze, renegotiate asylum with UN so asylum seekers apply to the nearest British embassy , cut benefits to make work attractive. It's not rocket science.

Chris Gudgin

Call me cynical (and yes, I am pro-Labour) but I really don't understand your analysis of this.
The reform quite obviously has nothing to do with preventing future irresponsibility and everything to do with driving home the message that Brown has borrowed too much, yet again, in an alternative way.
Whether you agree or disagree with this (and most people here obviously agree!), I guess I have to accept that the Tory operation is clever. The public will buy it...

Lord Elvis of Paisley

Labour hit back with new economic reforms

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tONz1gBpS3c/SN6x77aT0mI/AAAAAAAAAjo/OreMlYBrVNU/s1600-h/Brown+Economic+Plan.JPG

Old Hack

Perhaps this is a policy that the Conservatives hope that Labour will steal, as it would constrain reckless pre election spending?

anon

Not totally happy about this one, for two main reasons. Firstly, will this be another quango, who will appoint the members and to whom will they be responsible? Secondly, surely it is for prime ministers and chancellors to take reponsibility for these sort of decisions? Isn't that what they are elected for?

JR

I completely agree on this. Why set up another public body to monitor something which is a political responsibility, and indeed a political choice. Running up debt or reducing deby over an economic cycle can be valid in certain circumstances. But if Cameroon wants to go on a low debt policy then he should have the ability to follow that policy (or pay the consequences) when in Government. This is a confused, lightweight announcement and will feed into the Labour "notive" storyline.

Doug

This is a great idea and I hope it becomes a permanent feature of future governments and will help keep any future Labour governments (maybe in 25 years) from destroying our countries finances

John Page

Obviously the Tories are taking on board the fact that people don't trust politicians' numbers. Whether such a body would work depends on who's appointed and what their mandate is - this would be much trickier than an inflation target for the BoE.

Rhoda Klapp

Any future Labour (or nutory) chancellor will be able to get round this, using placemen, changing the parameters, lying, whatever. It cannot absolve the person in charge of the nation's finances from the resposibility of getting them right. 'I didn't know' ought to be a resignation offence. oh, what's that you say? You don't remember what a resignation offence is?

patrick nealon

Setting up new public bodies as a response to every problem is a very bad idea. The Voting public now realise it's just another expensive, and quasi political bureaucracy that solves nothing. There are already too many politicians, and too many quangos giving political platforms to politicians manque. Is Trevor Phillips anything other than an MP in all but name?

TrevorsDen

Isn't is obvious why we need something like outside oversight?

Brown is fiddling figures like no body's business. Setting up this body means the tories are telling the city, the public they mean what they say.

Doug

Tim Montgomerie says this idea came from an FT editorial:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a4a955b4-510e-11dd-b751-000077b07658.html

Bruce. UK

National Audit Office, anyone?

Verity

Anon and Patrick Nealon - Agreed. It's a quanqo and we've got over 1100 of these unelected, unelected money-gulpers in Britain already. Rather than creating more, the Tories should promise to dump every one of them on their first day in office.

The appointing of yet another quango to monitor a democratically elected government is tone deaf for these times.

David Cameron's Tories don't get it and I will not be surprised if they lose this election or it's a hung Parliament. Cameron is too wispy. There is nothing for the voter to cling to.

I judge him contemptuous of the voter. You cannot say, "Trust me. I have a secret plan and I know you're going to love it" for three years and imagine that anyone is going to give you the slightest credence.

So far, in his three years of "leadership", if that is not too strong a word, he has honoured the voters with not one proposal for healing our wrecked civil society or our blitzed economy.

The Shadow Cabinet is remote from the voters' everyday lives and experience and they have done bugger all to introduce themselves to us.

Tiberius

Brown gives independence to the BoE and seemingly the only big problem with this is that it isn't independent enough. But the principle of taking away the political angle of the government is accepted.

The Tories want to extend the principle from monetary policy to spending and borrowing levels, and some argue that the government is abrogating a responsibility it should retain.

A curious response, I find.

oldtimer

I think the idea is worth examining. It is not good enough just to dismiss it out of hand before we have seen the details. A watchdog on public debt could be extremely useful - just as the Conservatives want the Bank of England to resume its historic role as watchdog over banking debt.

Even if it did not possess regulatory powers, its name and shame influence would, I believe, provide powerful ammunition to an opposition party and the political/economic commentariat. Maybe the National Audit Office remit could be altered to do this, as suggested above.

The excessive levels of public and private debt are two of the big issues that the Conservatives must have policies for. They seem to me to suggesting useful ideas. The third is the virtual absence of private savings, down from c9% in 1997 to c0% today. Let us hope that they come up with equally useful ideas in their tax policy to recreate a savings culture. We badly need it.

I thought Cameron came across well on Marr as did Osborne on Adam Boulton`s programme.

Nick Kaplan

I understand people’s apprehensions about setting up a new quango but given the UK’s uncodified constitution I see no other way of enforcing fiscal responsibility. Governments should not be able to borrow in such large amounts; they have a duty not just to today’s voters but also to the tax payers of the future. Do any of those who are criticising this plan have a better alternative?

J H Holloway

Trust Verity not to see the big picture...this is taking politics out of running the country.

I should expect that the NHS will be run by an independent board that will ask the Tory government for money, which they will hand over. End of 'Tory Cuts' spin.

I'd also have the schools and exams overseen by apolitical experts from overseas - who can cut through the crap and tell the truth.

Of course politicans can influence quangos, as Brown did with the ONS by putting his man Len Cook in charge. And the Wanless report on funding the NHS came up with the wrong answer so Brown just lied about what it said.

The key is, of course, not to load it with placemen and not to write its brief so as to influence what it can do - see the post 1997 FSA and BoE Monetary Committee.

Personally, I'd trust the Conservatives to do that far, far more than Labour. The big but, however, is the sort of people who have the time and inclination to do jobs like this are the kind of meddling professional lefties who practice old fashioned entryism.

After all, the traffic and streets in London are controlled by people who hate cars. After all, if you want to have influence, where better to work?

Verity

I see a big enough picture to know - ahead of the pack - that the NHS should be privatised and people's NI contributions should be directed to whichever health insurer they choose - including the NHS, as one of many options, if they like.

Victor, NW Kent

A new quango appointed by the government to point a finger at the government? I think not.
If Cameron and Osborne cannot trust themselves to govern with discretion, honesty and some parsimony then they should not be seeking office.