Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

I shall say a word about Amendment 34. It seeks to provide that: "““The Office will place in the public domain a record of all meetings with the Chancellor … and other ministers””." When I tabled a Question for Written Answer on this matter for the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, he asked Robert Chote to answer it. Mr Chote has duly written to me and I shall quote from it: "““We will be publishing a list of contacts between the OBR and ministers, special advisers and their private offices shortly after each autumn and Budget forecast, beginning with our forthcoming forecast on November 29th””." I do not know when the list is going to be published and I have not seen it, but it is clear that regular formal or informal meetings with the Chancellor and other Ministers are a very important matter for an independent forecaster, one that is not available to our other 50-odd forecasters. So I hope we will have an answer to this very soon. That is the whole purpose of Amendment 34. I shall not add to my remarks because I am trying hard to curtail my contributions so that we get to the target figure of amendments that the Government want to see dealt with. But far be it from me to prevent Members of the Committee speaking.