Two links to quite different media appearances this week. Here’s the link to my Newsnight interview on the Pre-Budget Report. And here’s the link to my Westminster Hour interview about some of my political inspirations.

NIESR (National Institute for Economic and Social Research) has published its monthly estimate of GDP for December. NIESR’s release provides an unofficial first estimate of the UK’s Q4 GDP. The report suggests that GDP grew by 0.3 per cent  in the fourth quarter of 2009. The ONS’ preliminary estimate for Q4 GDP will be released on January 26th.
The Chancellor has [...]

Gutted. That sums up the way I feel about Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury. So many of my friends, constituents and party members work there that today could never be anything other than a very, very sad day.
Today I spoke Todd Stitzer, Cadbury’s chief executive about Kraft – and, crucially, the future. I wanted to know [...]

It has just come out that George Osborne’s plans to take away Child Tax Credits from households earning over £50,000 has fallen apart. It looks like the Tories are going to take tax credits away from families with a combined income of £31,000. We think 1.3 million families are going to be on the receiving [...]

A very happy Chinese New Year! Good to Birmingham’s Chinatown packed out this afternoon. (below a dragon takes a rest during this morning’s celebrations….)

A lot of economists have written to the FT today to back the government’s timetable for halving the deficit – and oppose the Tories’ notion that now is the right time to slam on the brakes, just as the recovery is starting. Here’s Alistair Darling said in response;
“Once again George Osborne has jumped on the [...]

After what could generally be regarded as a difficult four weeks, the Shadow Chancellor used last night’s Mais Lecture to break loose from the Tories’ “reassurance first” strategy, and confirm he would start cutting straight away.
And the alarm bells in the City started ringing immediately.
Almost as soon as George Osborne sat down, UBS’s highly respected [...]

Some of you might have seen a story in The Times today, which suggested that hospitals would close as a result of the savings and efficiencies in spending in the Department of Health,  part of a wider programme of savings across government which I am driving as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
This is wrong. The [...]

Tomorrow sees me in Edinburgh with our Secretary of State Jim Murphy and the Treasury team. We are meeting a cross-section of the business community to hear how they feel the recovery is taking hold – and what their priorities look like for the budget. More on this later.

The deficit debate has been in the news a bit this week – here’s an extract from my opening speech in the House of Commons on 9th January setting out the government’s deficit reduction plan…
‘Our judgment is that the deficit must fall from £178 billion this year to £96 billion in 2013-14, a fall of [...]

Two things that were striking this week.
Unemployment came down. There are a couple of different measures that are intersting here. First, ILO unemployment for the quarter fell by 33,000 to 2.45 million. And the ‘claimant count’ fell 32,300 in February to 1.585 million – the largest fall since 1997, and way below the 2 million [...]

Excellent to see the Labour’s pledges set out in Nottingham today. On the New Statesman blog is my take the argument Labour can make and win about the changes we need over the next five years. And as I have argued elsewhere, part of that change has to be a new style of politics and [...]

So, the end of the first full week of campaigning in Hodge Hill – in the last week or so, we’ve talked to hundreds of voters a day on the doorstep and on the phone across the constituency including at our big community immigration summit at Shard End Community Centre last night. Here’s the three [...]

I can’t tell you how proud I feel to have been elected again last night, to serve our community in Parliament. We won because we campaigned in the way we seek to serve our community. We fought with passion and purpose. We put our values centre-stage; our belief in social justice, and our belief that [...]

The Daily Mirror ran a short piece by me on the Government’s cuts plans today – here’s the link:
http://tinyurl.com/32asvq4

A good article from Ed Balls in yesterday’s Observer. Ed is absolutely right to address the immigration issue with both care, directness and a clear sense of what we need to do next. We have to show how working people will get better off not worse off from globalisation. Otherwise people will vote to roll [...]

Some will have seen Jeffrey Sacks piece in the FT today. There’s a lot of Prof Sacks work I admire – he taught me at Harvard – but I think he got the tenor of his argument wrong today. For those interested in a counter-blast, see Brad DeLong. Dani Rodrik has a more rather more [...]

The IFS today confirmed that the only way George Osborne could make his Budget look progressive was by including Labour’s reforms.
The Institue said that if you exclude Labour’s reforms, overall analysis showed: “the impact of yesterday’s measures were regressive”.
The head of the IFS, Robert Chote spelt it out: “The Budget looks less progressive – [...]

During the election, Nick Clegg unveiled a poster,  warning voters to beware of Tory plans to raise VAT.
A “Tory VAT Bombshell”, he called it.
Well, as I said in the Commons today, little did we know that just a matter of weeks later, it would be the Lib Dems who would prime that bomb and detonate [...]

Today, I set out in the Guardian exactly what the Lib Dem’s broken VAT promise is going to mean for charities – something like £150 million more in irrecoverable VAT. First strike against the Big Society?
Below is the research and press release compiled by Ian Lucas MP and myself….
Liam Byrne and Ian Lucas today published analysis [...]

This week’s jobs figures have renewed the debate about the recovery ahead. The good news was unemployment fell. The bad news was there was little evidence of any great revival in the private sector spirits.
With sweeping public sector job cuts in the Autumn, it’s now time to worry about the ‘economic death spiral’ that awaits if [...]

The Office of Tax Simplification announced today sounded like a good idea to me. It was a shame we had to drag ministers to the House of Commons to tell MPs what ministers had told the media. But, it emerged that the Office’s leadership has simply been appointed – and one man, Michael Jack, is [...]