0:00
Look, there was no misleading. Um, and I
0:03
simply don't accept, and I was receiving
0:05
the numbers, that being told that the
0:07
OBR productivity review means you've got
0:10
16 billion pounds less um than you would
0:13
otherwise have had. Um, shows that
0:15
you've got an easy starting point.
0:17
Okay. Well, 16 billion. Um, I suppose
0:20
it's true that um the productivity
0:24
forecasts were pretty gloomy, but the
0:25
problem here and the issue that the
0:27
prime minister completely failed to
0:28
address is that whilst they were told of
0:31
a productivity problem, they were also
0:33
told that tax receipts because of
0:35
inflation and because of that wave of
0:37
tax hikes last year meant that they were
0:39
effectively um out of the mud. Um, and
0:43
they kept that bit back from the public.
0:44
So, contrary to what the prime minister
0:46
just said, um we were misled. Um the
0:49
BBC's political editor this morning made
0:51
it very clear that he felt he had been
0:53
misled and that he had therefore misled
0:55
the public in all of the reporting
0:57
around who said what and when about the
0:59
budget and the numbers from the OBR.
1:01
This all might seem academic or worse,
1:03
it might just seem like some sort of
1:05
inside baseball Westminster Village
1:07
story. It does matter. We know for a
1:10
fact that the chaos and uncertainty in
1:13
the buildup to the budget had a material
1:15
impact on financial and economic
1:17
decisions. We also know that the
1:21
business confidence levels since the
1:23
budget as a result of the budget, never
1:25
mind what numbers fed into it, the
1:27
decisions announced in the budget have
1:28
seen business confidence levels sink to
1:31
some pretty worrying lows. About as low
1:33
as they were one month after the first
1:36
lockdown five years ago. So that tells
1:38
you how corporate Britain is responding
1:40
to the budget. Prime Minister's tried to
1:42
strike an optimistic note, a delightful
1:44
line uh in his speech where he said that
1:46
he feels as a country we have now walked
1:49
through the narrowest part of the
1:51
tunnel. Well, be that as it may, we're
1:54
still very much in the tunnel. And when
1:57
it comes to the OBR's numbers and who
1:59
misled who, we're also still in the
