Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, it seems to be still absolutely clear that having monetary policy based on one lot of forecasts and fiscal policy based on a different set of forecasts is likely to turn out to be very bad news indeed. Secondly, on the question of whether the official forecast is to be predominant—a point that the opposition Front Bench made—it seems to me that the whole fanfare at the original press conference was saying, ““No more fiddling figures by the Government or the Treasury—we will have a totally independent forecast””. Now we are told that it will be an independent forecast, but that the Government, if they do not like the OBR’s figures, might perhaps produce their own. I fail to see the point of the entire exercise if this is so. We will no doubt wish to return to this later, but, meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 7 withdrawn.