Labour's shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, criticised the Chancellor George Osborne today after it was revealed that the sale of 4G licences had raised just £2.3bn. A billion pound short after the Office for Budget Responsibility guestimated they'd raise £3.5bn for Treasury coffers. £600m has already been used by the government for scientific research.
Ms Reeves said “This is yet another blow to George Osborne’s failing economic plan. It shows how foolish and short-termist the Chancellor was to bank this cash in the autumn statement to make his borrowing figures look less bad. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that borrowing was up so far this year but his trickery has now badly backfired. We will need to look out for more smoke and mirrors when tomorrow’s borrowing figures are published."
"The only fair way to judge what is happening to the public finances will be to exclude the short-term transfer of money from the Bank of England’s quantitative easing scheme. Whatever wheezes George Osborne tries, he cannot hide from the fact that no growth on his watch has led to billions more borrowing as the costs of economic failure mount. Instead of more accounting trickery what we really need from this Chancellor is action to kick-start our flatlining economy.”
However it is not only the Government who got their guestimate wrong. During his speech to the Labour party conference on October 1st 2012 Ed Balls the Shadow Chancellor called for 100,000 new affordable homes and a two-year stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers to kick-start the economy. He said "the £3bn to £4bn funding should come from the 4G mobile spectrum sale."
As the Shadow Chancellor like the Chancellor believed the figure would be higher than it was will Rachel Reeves be criticising his "foolish and short-termist" approach to the sales aswell?
