Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall speak specifically to the amendment in the name of my noble friend and myself, but what I say will also be very relevant to the other three amendments in the group. Overwhelmingly, economists—I certainly include myself here—regard budget responsibility, or more generally financial soundness, as desirable, but within serious economics that desirability would be a means and not an end in itself. The end that one would have in mind in asking, ““Why financial soundness?””, or, ““Why financial responsibility?””, is the behaviour of the real economy. I know nothing in economics that tells anybody anything other than that the behaviour of the real economy is what we should be concentrating on. That is the specific purpose of my noble friend’s amendment and it is quite specifically the purpose of Amendment 2. Noble Lords whose memories go back a long way will realise that the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Barnett is simply an echo or, perhaps more than that, more or less a restatement of Section 11 of the Bank of England Act 1998, which set up the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Essentially, it is derived from the very famous subject of that section. We wish precisely that to appear in this Bill. Indeed, it would be absolutely absurd for the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England to take account of Her Majesty’s Government’s economic policy for growth and employment—the real economy—and for the OBR not to do so. It is difficult to think that anyone could rationally have talked themselves into that position and I cannot believe that that is the position that the Government want.