Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, we are in danger of getting involved in metaphysics rather than econometrics. The absolutely central thing in the Bill is that the main duty of the office is to examine and report on sustainability. To say, ““Oh well, the OBR itself will decide what is meant by that”” when it is in the Bill is not a satisfactory situation. We have to have some idea of what is meant by it. As far as the individual is concerned, it is fairly clear: if your expenditure is more than your income, the position is not sustainable—except, of course, that you can delay the proceedings by borrowing and so on. The same is not totally untrue as far as the Government are concerned. In the light of the earlier clauses to which I referred, is the OBR going to say, ““The way the Government are going will not work. Their fiscal objective””—in the simple terms I have just outlined for an individual——““is not sustainable””? The same would have been true if the OBR had been reporting earlier on the position of the Irish Government. It could have said, ““This is not sustainable. You will either default, have to be bailed out—which may or may not be a sustainable position—get out of the euro, or whatever””. Is the OBR going to say, as perhaps it might have said to the previous Government, ““What you are doing is not sustainable””? We have taken the clear position as an incoming Government that what the previous Government were doing was not sustainable; in short, they were going to go bust unless they could continue borrowing enough to stay afloat. Is this what is meant by sustainability? It probably is but, if so, we at least need confirmation from the Government—not from the OBR—that it means, ““You cannot go on doing this without various other consequences following””.