Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful for the general support around the House which this group of amendments seems to command. I am very happy for noble Lords to take credit for the ideas in there, if they wish to do so. Although the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, may not quite understand or want to appreciate why we have grouped these amendments together, they all touch critically on the independence of the OBR. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Noakes for pointing out that in the OBR’s short existence—even before it is within a statutory framework—Robert Chote and his colleagues have done a remarkable job through the quality and extent of their work to carve out an unchallenged reputation for quality of thinking and independence. Of course, we need to make sure that the Bill underpins that. In that context, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who speaks from a position of great authority as a former Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, for pointing out that for all the OBR’s independence, HM Treasury will need to retain a separate capability to monitor and assess the progression of the economy. I thought that his admirable summary was the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. I had a sense of déjà vu, because I thought we were going back to Oral Questions with the first part of the noble Lord’s intervention. We will pass over our regular sparring about the Monetary Policy Committee, but his questions on why the OBR is needed and its independence were partly answered by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. Fundamentally, over the past few years, as the previous Government redefined the cycle, there was not an appropriate degree of transparency around the forecasts, which is why we believe the OBR is necessary. I do not want to dwell on that because we spent a lot of time on that at Second Reading and in Committee. The job now is to get that independence properly enshrined in the Bill, which takes me to the suggestions from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. Also, on the comment from my noble friend Lord Newby, I am sorry that the parliamentary draftsmen did not precisely agree with his wording but grateful for confirmation that we got to the same result. On the couple of questions from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, on Clause 5(3), indeed the OBR now has a clear and explicit duty to consider government policies in its work. That is what the OBR is essentially all about: assessing the impact of government policies and, on the back of that, whether the fiscal mandate will be met. Clause 5(3) is indeed now quite clear on that. Clause 6(1) is quite explicit that the charter may still give guidance on other topics but there is a particular signal that the charter may give particular guidance on timing. When the noble Lord comes on to press me on the draft charter, I think that we will all agree on how important the transparency of the remit is. The critical point, as I hope noble Lords would agree, is that we published the draft charter early on in our discussions, to enable that to be fully considered in Committee. As my noble friend Lord Newby said, any consequential redrafting of the charter as a result of our discussions will be small. The essential point is that we issued a draft charter in very good time for discussion now. There is no overwhelming need to issue a new draft, simply because not a lot will have changed. We have been clear on the issues that we have looked at again. While I hear what has been said, I do not want to prejudice how the charter and the Bill might be looked at as they go through the stages in another place, as and when we send the Bill there. I hope that answers the various points that have come up on this group of amendments. Amendment 1 agreed. Amendment 2 Moved by