Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have been struggling with this debate. I have had difficulty in seeing where it was going. When I looked at the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, I thought, ““Surely everyone assumes that that is the way that it will be done in any case””. In that sense, I am not sure what the amendment adds because I do not understand what the counterfactual position would be if the OBR tried to do an analysis of sustainability that was not in the light of the Government’s economic policy. To the extent that the amendment would clarify a situation if there were any real doubt about whether that would be the position, then I can see that it has merit. I am not contradicting what the noble Lord says about how this should be done. I would expect the OBR to do it in that way, largely because I cannot see how it would do it in any other way; it would be rather limited. My assumption is that the response to this will be, ““It isn’t necessary because everyone would assume that this was the way that it would be done””. I agree with everything that the noble Lord has said about how one would hope that this would be done; my only question is whether the amendment is necessary. On the question of how far one wants to spell out the issue of sustainability, my preference would be to leave the OBR to give its own definition and present its own analysis. It would then be up to others to question whether it had done that correctly, whether it had missed out something in its definition of ““sustainability”” or whether the analysis was too narrow and should have been broadened. That could easily be a subject for debate after the OBR had presented its report, and no doubt it would then be taken into account when it made its next report. If we follow much of the debate that has gone on, and if we are setting up something that we hope will last a long time, I am conscious of the fact that there are not many aspects of economic policy that remain unchanged for long periods of time. People’s interpretations of words and policies move over time. I would be cautious about trying to be too specific about what we mean by ““sustainability””. In the broadest sense we understand what it means but, if circumstances were to arise that required a different definition or we had to assume that the Government would react in some way in future to certain types of events and that were to be built into the analysis, that could be done. I find myself agreeing with the amendment, but I question whether it is necessary or whether it would not be assumed that what it suggests would already be the case.