Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Let me start with the easy end of this. Some important points were raised, not least the crucial point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for trying to save postage—we do look at every bit of possible wastage around government. However, on the point that my noble friend Lady Noakes raised, the construct here is that in Clause 8(2) the OBR is required to lay its reports before Parliament, and that means directly. So it is probably worth the price of a postage stamp or somebody pressing an electronic button, or whatever one does these days, to ensure that, given that this is an independent body, it does not forget to send a courier round to the Treasury as well. That is probably a failsafe that we should have in there. On the nub of the questions around the linkage of the forecast to the Treasury and the linkage between the forecasts of the OBR and the MPC, the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, kindly drew our attention to paragraph 3.7 of the charter. That is the critical one. In the first sentence it says: "““The Government intends to adopt the OBR’s fiscal and economic forecasts as the official forecast for the Budget Report””." That is the Government’s intention, but the charter continues by saying that the Government, "““retains the right to disagree with the OBR's forecasts””."