Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, in answer to the first question, to be clear again, it is certainly the case that there is a group which is executive and expert and then there is a second group, described at the moment in the Bill as ““non-expert””, which is also non-executive. That second group could be experts, there is nothing to rule that out, but the point is that they do not have to be experts; they should, however, be sufficiently independently minded, supportive and challenging of the executive expert members. We have put in ““two or more”” because at the moment we think that the remit of the OBR and the construct should be perfectly sufficient and workable for robust government arrangements. That is the minimum number. To have one non-exec would put that individual in an impossible position; two gets you to the minimum. If the OBR’s remit were somehow to develop in an unanticipated way, it might be appropriate to modestly expand the number of non-exec non-experts, but that is not the intention at the moment.