The UK economy is currently growing more slowly than all its economic competitors in the club of advanced economies. By comparing OBR forecasts with International Monetary Fund forecasts for the other G7 economies, the productivity slowdown has limited growth, weighed on living standards, and put the UK behind most of its peers in the G7 group of leading industrial economies. Britain's economy will also trail the eurozone for each of the coming three years at least, as its growth falls to the bottom of the European Union's 28 member states. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's forecast for 2018 and 2019 is even below the downgraded estimate issued previously by the OBR, and also highlights how the organisation believes Brexit will weigh heavily on the state's future—[Interruption.] No, I will not give way—economic performance.

It is also important to put on the record that we should all consider the OBR's economic forecasts as the very best-case scenario. They incorporate the impact of any tax and spending measures announced in the budget statement by the UK Chancellor and the effect on economic growth for subsequent years. However, they are forecast based on the status quo in terms of the trading relationship the UK currently enjoys with various markets around the world. The current trading relationship we enjoy with the European Union we know will change. We, of course, cannot be sure today what the nature of that change will be, but I think experience of the last 48 hours suggests that the trading relationship we currently enjoy will not be that of the future. Any changes in that relationship through additional tariffs and non-tariff barriers imposed on UK export will mean those forecasts will inevitably be downgraded further due to the negative effect it would have on the UK's balance of trade.

But crucially, Llywydd, taking away the Brexit dimension, what has become abundantly clear, and what was confirmed in the United Kingdom budget, is that extreme fiscal contraction—austerity—is self-defeating. The last Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Osborne, told us that a budget balance or surplus would be achieved after five years of deep fiscal contraction. The OBR tells us that budget surpluses are now not to be expected until well into the next decade. Citizens everywhere, therefore, will rightly ask what on earth all this pain was for. Why have our communities been asset-stripped? Why have essential services been cut to the bone? Why have those with the least paid the price for the mistakes of the few at the top? It is also worth repeating, too, that part of the reason for the UK's failure to produce sustainable long-term economic growth that rebalances the economy and that is spread outside the London city state is because of the refusal of the UK Government to restructure the UK economy in favour of re-industrialisation and prosperity to all parts. The UK is not just constitutionally flawed; again, as we've seen in the last 24 hours, it is fundamentally flawed as an economic construct too.