The most politically significant moment during Mark Carney’s apperance before the Treasury select committee came when the Bank of England governor stated that “fiscal adjustment” (spending cuts and tax rises) “has been a drag on growth”.
This might appear to put him at odds with George Osborne who in his speech on the economy earlier this week, derided the “fiscalists” who claimed that the cuts had been more damaging than expected. But the Tory Treasury Twitter account has responded by stating that Carney’s comments are “consistent” with Osborne’s argument that the OBR’s 2010 fiscal multipliers (which measure the effect of cuts and tax rises on growth) were not too optimistic.
The Treasury did, however, refuse to concede that the cuts had, at least to some extent, depressed growth. As David Cameron was reminded by Robert Chote earlier this year (when he suggested that austerity had not hit output), the OBR’s multipliers assume that “every £100 of fiscal consolidation measures reduce GDP in that year by around £100 for capital spending cuts, £60 for welfare and public services, £35 for increases in the VAT rate and £30 for income tax and National Insurance increases”. Fiscal consolidation is estimated to have reduced GDP by 1.4 per cent in 2011-12 alone.
Cameron and Osborne are understandably reluctant to admit that the cuts mean growth has been lower than in normal circumstances. It allows Labour to argue that a less aggressive deficit reduction plan would have enabled higher levels of output. Which explains why you can expect Ed Balls and Ed Miliband to leap with glee on Carney’s quote and the Tories to try and act as if they never heard him.
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