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Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me be the first to say that the Opposition support an independent OBR, so long as it is indeed independent. In that respect, the OBR has some ground to make up and some points to prove after its very difficult start in life. Initially it was located a few doors down from the Chancellor in the Treasury and consisted entirely of Treasury civil servants. Its much vaunted ““independence”” was utterly compromised in June last year when it was unwisely bounced into the politically convenient early publication of employment forecasts, suspiciously just ahead of Prime Minister's Question Time—the Minister did not refer to that incident. The forecasts themselves turned out to be controversial and the OBR ended up looking more like an offshoot of the propaganda machine inside Conservative central office than an independent and trusted forecasting organisation. Sir Alan Budd, the interim head of the OBR, announced his shock departure shortly afterwards. We may well have to wait until he writes his memoirs to find out exactly what really happened.