Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

That is true but one is talking about October. There will still be a lot of uncertainty even about what happened in 2014 come this October. There is still a fair amount of uncertainty about 2015. On page 63 of our report we have a fan chart that expresses the uncertainty around the Government deficit. The range of uncertainty is narrowing over time but it is still quite big at that point. It is important to bear in mind that since last year, the budget has been moved forward. Critically, it has been moved forward ahead of the November Exchequer returns which are pretty hard to predict.

In our previous report we did some analysis which pointed out that the uncertainty around budget day forecasts is now significantly higher than it was in the past. Although there will be more information by October, it is not as if 2014 or 2015 will be a done deal; there will still be a lot of uncertainty around.