Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

It is simply a matter of fact at the moment, because the OBR is not yet constituted on a statutory basis, that the employing body has to be somewhere else and, at the moment, it is the Treasury. The staff do not have to come from the Treasury. Indeed, I understand that an advertisement is out now publicly before the OBR to recruit an economist. It can recruit from wherever it likes; it has the resources to do that. The OBR will recruit to have an appropriate mix of knowledge and expertise, but the critical thing is that that it should recruit from wherever it would like to without any unreasonable hindrance. All the recruitment will be led by the independent, externally recruited members of the BRC. Even though it is not a formal employer at the moment, it is getting on and doing all the recruitment, totally independently.