Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, I speak almost in direct contradiction to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. The current draft of the fiscal framework says: "““The Government intends to adopt the OBR’s fiscal and economic forecasts as the official forecast of the Budget Report. The Government retains the right to disagree with the OBR’s forecasts and, if this is the case, will explain why to Parliament. The Treasury will continue to maintain the necessary analytical and macroeconomic expertise to provide on-going advice to the Government””." I would say that that is absolutely spot on and what the relationship should be. Treasury Ministers have the ultimate accountability and should, if they feel it essential, be able to state their view and then justify it in a very important area, which is different from monetary policy. They take fiscal policy decisions; they do not take monetary policy decisions. This is the correct formulation and I hope that it will be supported. The Treasury will, of course, need to maintain a separate apparatus. If the entire forecasting apparatus were transferred to the OBR it would be necessary for the Treasury, for all sorts of other purposes—if only to answer questions from Parliament—to retain some apparatus. Then you would get unnecessary duplication. On the question of whether the Bank and the OBR should agree a common forecast, it is surprising that someone from the Conservative Party is suggesting a monopoly. I think that the element of competition is important and, if the two forecasts differ, we ought to know why. Parliament, the EAC and its equivalent committee, the Treasury Select Committee, should examine why the two bodies have different views, rather than try to suppress them and coerce them into some kind of lowest common denominator. Therefore, I am not attracted at all to this group of amendments and I think that paragraph 3.7 of the draft charter is exactly where we should be.