Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Oh dear! Where do I start? I should say—because I genuinely mean it—that it is important to have full and appropriate scrutiny in your Lordships’ House of what the OBR is about. However, we must be careful. I do not want to be too hidebound by some inappropriately narrow interpretation of propriety and convention, but I think that we need to be careful about the balance between achieving full scrutiny here and not crossing inappropriate lines. We need to remember that there are a lot of important provisions in the Bill that will enable scrutiny by Parliament as a whole, so the Budget Responsibility Committee will indeed be available for Select Committee scrutiny. Its forecasts and very full analysis, which we have discussed at some length, will be laid directly before both Houses. On funding, there will be separate reporting of the OBR’s expenditure in the Treasury estimates presented to Parliament, and of course there have already been quite a number of Written Questions. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, does not always like the way that I reply to his Questions, but perhaps if he would cut them down from six to one a day, I could focus even more attention on providing him with a really good Answer. However, as he knows, Questions that he and other noble Lords send in which relate to the OBR’s responsibilities always get passed on to the OBR.