Ed Balls and Nicola Sturgeon hit out at IFS analysis

Ed Balls and Nicola Sturgeon are unhappy with the IFS’ analysis of their budget plans.

Mr Balls, Labour’s shadow chancellor, said that the IFS numbers “wrongly assume” that Labour will get the “current budget only into balance.

He says that his party gave a clear manifesto pledge that his party would get the budget not into balance but “into surplus as soon as possible in the next Parliament”.

He said: “How big that surplus will be, and how quickly we can achieve that in the next Parliament, will depend on what happens to wages and the economy.”

Nicola Sturgeon is equally unhappy. “Let me give you three points in which it gets the SNP’s plans wrong. Firstly, it doesn’t credit for any increases in revenue from the tax rises we are proposing. Secondly, it gives no credit for the revenue we would increase from cracking down on tax avoidance. “The fundamental misassumption at the heart of the IFS report this morning is this one: it assumes that the SNP would cut borrowing by 2019/20 to 1.4% of GDP – that’s not our plan. Our plan is for borrowing in that year to be 1.6% of GDP.”