Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for my failure to be here on time. I should like to place on record my gratitude to the police officer outside—I should probably not name him, but I will write to the commissioner—who let me vault the double line of barriers, even though that caused lots of other people in the square, whose intentions in getting to this building were probably not as well meaning as mine, to try to follow me. I place on record my gratitude to the Metropolitan Police officer who exercised some judgment in letting me through. I am sorry that I did not get here at the beginning. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for raising this question again because it is important that we get right the balance. We must protect the matters of propriety around this office and balance that with what the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said about attracting the best candidates to the office. The fact that this amendment is named Amendment 41A rather than Amendment 41 points out the difficulty with naming a particular body, which could come and go over the years. I believe that it is appropriate to leave it to the specification of the Public Accounts Commission, which can decide on the appropriate body to make the decision at the time. I see the point that the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, is making about the desirability of certainty. Of course, it would be open to the Public Accounts Commission to specify at the time of the appointment—obviously not of the current Comptroller and Auditor-General but of future C&AGs—which relevant body would apply. Specifying a body now that could change over the years would provide a degree of unnecessary inflexibility and the law would have to be changed if the body specified ceased to exist. Critically, we have the protection that the appointment is in the hands of the Public Accounts Commission. The certainty point is something that could be taken into account at the time of the appointment.