Professor Michael McMahon:

I will risk echoing the discussion we had in September. We even discuss this, which goes to show reasonable people can disagree on these things. One answer is completely temporary things that you have to pay in a given year and that you want to take out. The EU fiscal rules used to allow what are called one-offs. They were susceptible to potentially mislabelling as one-off something that could persist. It is also reasonable to think Covid is - touch wood - a once-per-100-year pandemic and the costs of adjusting to it should not be borne by one generation in 2020 and 2021 but could be spread out over many. There could be argument about how to do that.

Where our debate in September pushed me is that when we all get to the point of arguing about what is core and non-core, it is probably counterproductive. We should just look at the total spending and if there are things in that we think of as exceptional, we could stand in front of the House or public and explain why those things violate whatever fiscal anchor is set as part of the fiscal framework. We could sit here for many hours into the night discussing whether one thing should be core or non-core but it is clear the ordinary business of fiscal spending should be part of core because it comes with a need to be financed.