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Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for that intervention. Needless to say, one of the very first things that our Chancellor of the Exchequer did was to give away the forecasting power to an independent body so that our statistics can be relied on. This is not just about public faith in the statistics but the faith of the money markets internationally. That is why the forecasts and credit ratings of this country have been upgraded since the emergency Budget, and secured since the Government laid down a clear, responsible fiscal policy on how they were moving forward. These are highly important matters. Like many people, I am sure, I am sick to death of the cherry-picking by Labour Members. Stopping that taking place strengthens the case for the Office for Budget Responsibility. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) told the House about GDP figures between 1997 and 2010, when Labour left office, but he never mentioned that the private finance initiative was taken off the books. That meant that huge amounts of public debt and public spending were not linked in to those GDP figures because of a fiddle done with the statistics. That cherry-picking must, and will, stop under the Office for Budget Responsibility. We are told that forecasts can change and that it is therefore not the fault of the previous Chancellor that we are in such a mess. I would like to have seen the forecasts that were made for the price of gold in 2000, when it was at its lowest level ever. Was everybody saying, ““It will just drop further and further, so sell the lot now””? I very much doubt it. When things go wrong, it is too easy for the Opposition to say, ““It wasn't our fault—forecasts change.”” We now have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has taken the bold step of passing responsibility to the Office of Budget Responsibility and has put together a Budget that is based on realistic figures rather than what he would like them to be, buried in his bunker at No. 11.