Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2015-11-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the deficit in the light of statistics from the ONS recording the highest level of borrowing in six years.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

The government has made significant progress to date in reducing borrowing – the deficit has more than halved as a share of GDP since 2009-10 and the national debt as a share of GDP is forecast to be falling this year. But the job is not yet done – the deficit remains high among advanced economies.

At Summer Budget the government announced £17 billion of consolidation measures; £5 billion from tax avoidance, evasion and imbalances in the tax system and £12 billion from welfare reform. The Autumn Statement and Spending Review laid out a further £18 billion; £12 billion savings to overall RDEL spending; £3 billion from the Apprenticeship levy and £3 billion from delivering reforms such as Making Tax Digital and further measures to tackle tax avoidance.

In their November forecast, the independent OBR predict the deficit to fall in each year of this Parliament, reaching a £10.1 billion surplus by 2019-20.