Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

In moving the amendment, I think that it would be helpful to discuss Amendments 21, 33 and 38. I shall dispose of Amendment 38 immediately as it is rather oddly grouped with the other amendments. It refers to leaving out ““paragraph (c)””. That part of the Bill says that the OBR must, "““publish the report … lay it before Parliament, and … send a copy of it to the Treasury””." I tabled the amendment as it seems rather absurd if the office has to publish and lay the report before Parliament that it should need to send a copy to the Treasury. We could make a substantial saving in public expenditure on postage by eliminating that and I hope that my noble friend will accept that amendment. Amendments 7 and 21 take a diametrically opposed view to that expressed by the noble Lords opposite in Amendment 33. Amendment 7 states: "““The Treasury shall not make economic forecasts covering the same areas as those of the Office for Budget Responsibility””." There is a case for including that in the Bill because, otherwise, after going through all the expense of the OBR, we will find the Treasury still duplicating it unnecessarily. I hope that my noble friend can accept that amendment. Amendment 21 is an important amendment dealing with the forecasts and suggests that we should insert, "““which are agreed with the Bank of England; the agreed forecasts will then be used both by the Treasury and the Bank of England””." If our economy is not to be managed in a totally schizophrenic manner between the fiscal and monetary side of things, it would be quite absurd if the two bodies will not use the same forecasts. Otherwise we are bound to end up with a situation where monetary policy goes one way and the forecast on which the decisions are based may be quite different from that of the Office for Budget Responsibility. That seems an eminently sensible suggestion. It is categorically contradicted by the amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Peston and Lord Barnett, which says that the, "““Office must always act independently of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, especially in regard to its forecasts””." I do not think that the Bank of England can have one set of forecasts and the Treasury another without there being some risk that economic policy is in conflict between monetary and fiscal policy. I beg to move.