Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)

My Lords, we used to have a rule of Budget purdah in this country for the very good reason that it prevented market speculation in the run-up to the House of Commons hearing the Budget details. Every Chancellor who followed me in office has steadily weakened that and, this year, we have had three months of absolutely absurd semi-debate, with hints, leaks and suggestions from the Government being debated. It began by ruling out any question of raising the four most basic taxes that everybody previously turned to when they needed more revenue, because they share the burden more fairly across the country. This has now accumulated with the Prime Minister deciding, two days before the Budget, that he will take for himself a popular announcement—to some of his Cabinet colleagues and Back-Benchers—that he will ease the fiscal rules on which the Budget is based. Fortunately, this nonsense has so far had only a slightly dampening effect on investors and markets, but it has had an undoubtedly dampening effect on business activity for the last two or three months. Will the Minister ask his colleagues to consider returning to Budget purdah in future years? If this circus is now to be the pattern for every Budget throughout this Parliament, then, sooner or later, we are going to have market speculation and a financial crisis of the kind that followed Liz Truss’s Budget.