---

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point about creating a third institution when it should be Parliament's job to challenge the Executive and the Treasury on their policies. The point we want to make through the amendments is essentially that, simply to have a fiscal mandate in the charter for budget responsibility is inadequate. We feel that it is important to have a growth mandate to supplement the fiscal mandate in the charter and, more than that, that the Office for Budget Responsibility should also have a duty to assess the impact of the Treasury's policies on the real economy, on employment and on growth. I do not think that that necessarily sets the office's face against or in juxtaposition to the Treasury—it would simply give it absolute clarity that it had the right and appropriate remit to consider those wider real economic effects.