Green Budget: There's not much meat in the Chancellor's nouvelle cuisine

Where's the beef? The latest dish from Mr Brown's new restaurant is one of those standard North London fashionable starters: an enormous white plate with a tiny mound of chargrilled vegetables crouching in the middle, surrounded by large puddles of multi-coloured sauces. It looks gorgeous when photographed for a glossy magazine. But there isn't much to eat.

That may be no bad thing. Since the economy ain't broke, there is little point in trying to fix it. But if you measure the autumn statement against the sort of tests that Chancellor would himself apply it is hard to avoid a sense of disappointment. Is this an approach to spending and taxation which will be robust in the tougher times to come? Is that stuff on company tax really for the long term in the sense that it helps companies plan for the future? Is it fair between generations, given the adverse demographic trends which will strike in the next century? Will the overall impact on the willingness to save be positive? Are there serious measures designed to help the environment? Is the process transparent in the sense that we can see how money is really being spent?

The answer to all those questions is that the words mostly sound fine. But we don't know what those words actually mean because there is no detail yet; and there is the odd little fib, not a downright lie, but the occasional statement that seems designed to mislead.

To explain: autumn statements like this fall into halves. The first half is information about what is happening to the economy; the second, what the government intends to do about this.

The first half is mostly the new forecast. Here growth this year has been slightly faster than was thought back in July, and inflation seems a touch higher too. On the other hand, the balance of payments is much better: it looks as though there will be a surplus instead of a deficit.

But even in this factual first half of the statement there is a hint of dishonesty. The Treasury's forecast for next year is a range: growth between 2.25 and 2.75 per cent. That is fine, for the uncertainties next year look large. But in his speech the Chancellor suggested that the outcome within this range would depend on wages. If working people did not ask for too much money we would get the higher growth figure; if we did, the lower one.

As an economic proposition this is ridiculous. There are plenty of potential reasons why growth may slow down next year. These include the fall-off of demand in East Asia; the knock-on impact of that in the US; uncertainties associated with the single currency in Europe; a sharper-than-expected fall in demand here because of the ending of the windfall gains; a sudden deterioration of the current account. Among that pack, a surge of wages is pretty far down the list. It is a factor, to be sure. But it is one among many.

Now turn to the second half of the statement. While the words mostly sound fine, it is hard not to catch the odd twinge of concern. For example, the most substantive new information was on company taxation. There was a load of stuff about the need to improve productivity by increased investment, which is absolutely right. There were these tax changes, which were going to be phased in and there were going to be special arrangements for small and medium-sized businesses... But wait a minute, if these things are supposed to be good for business, why do small and medium-sized businesses need to be protected by special arrangements?

Or take the passage about the environment. Again, plenty of fine words, but little of substance. There are, for example, the very best reasons for wanting to try to protect elderly people from the cold, but the additional payments are not a key element in energy policy. Then to pretend that lower-than-expected payments to the EU suddenly create money that was not there before is to create a misleading element of ear-marking in public finance.

I mean, just think what wonderful things the government could do for us if it did not have to pay any net payments to the EU at all.

Because the presentation of Mr Brown's ideas has been "dumbed down", there is a temptation to assume that he is overselling the whole of the package: that all policy is designed to sound nice and look good, and that the substance, when it comes, will inevitably disappoint. That seems a pity, because the analysis is spot on: productivity, employment, stability are absolutely the things on which the government should focus.

New restaurants usually get good reviews. The writers want them to succeed and to some extent may be loathe to criticise in case they are wrong and make an enemy. Here, we still have not had the main course, so it is unfair to growl too loudly. The decor is great, this starter OK-ish, but pre- opening fears that there might be more style than substance are in danger of being realised. No stars yet.