Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

I also welcome these amendments. We spent a great deal of time in Grand Committee trying to bring greater clarity to the remit of the OBR and protecting its independence. We also tried to clarify the governance of the OBR and, particularly, the role of its non-executive members. The Government have responded positively to those discussions. The amendments deal very well with the bulk of the issues that were raised, particularly in clarifying those areas of the remit where there was ambiguity and the role of the non-executive members in relation to their oversight of the forecasting process and as the protectors of the external review process. That has been a success. I fear that there will always be a certain amount of tension between observers when it comes to the relationship between the forecasts of the OBR and the activities that take place within the Treasury. I pointed out at Second Reading that whatever arrangements are put in place for the OBR, you cannot strip the Treasury of its own skill set and the resources it needs to monitor the progress of the economy and to make judgments on whether the economy is following the track that was intended at the time that measures were taken. This is an arrangement that we have to live with. I am sure that as time goes on, we will see much more clearly the way in which those are worked out and how the OBR relates to the internal activities of the Treasury. I hope that noble Lords will not get too exercised about this. That is a natural tension that exists in this type of arrangement and I would be surprised if it cannot be made to work.