Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]
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Lord Eatwell
My Lords, before moving on to Amendment 20, I shall make a couple of general remarks about how we have done so far. All sides want, I think, to make the Bill a success. That is not really a matter of political dispute. The Committee has already unearthed some serious failings in drafting. For example, on fiscal policy, the OBR is supposed not to regard a critique of economic policy as within its remit, but on the issue of judging the sustainability of fiscal policy the context of general economic policy is within its remit. What is it to do? Is it one way or the other?
Then there is the question of Clause 5(3)—the clause with the inverse meaning, as I think of it now. Everybody thought that it was designed to prevent something from being done, but then we discovered to our amazement that it is all about what has to be taken into account. This sort of obscurantist drafting gives the law a bad name. There were also the statements in the charter, notably the reference to “intergenerational fairness”, over which we have the grave suspicion that the person who drafted the phrase had not the faintest idea what it meant.
Yet none of these is a political issue. None of them really merits the instruction, “Resist”. All of them are items to debate and to correct. This is a fine example of why technical Bills such as this should go to pre-legislative scrutiny. Be that as it may, my message to the Minister and to the anxious officials behind him is: “Loosen up”. Let us use this Grand Committee for the constructive purpose that it was intended to have and try to do what we all want, which is to ensure that this Bill works, works well and works for the long term.
With respect to Amendment 20, the OBR has made a major step forward in recognising the uncertainty around the probabilistic nature of economic forecasting —and quite right, too. However, this has clearly not yet penetrated the thinking of government Ministers. In the Chancellor’s Statement last Monday, he boldly declared that the OBR had ruled out the possibility of a double-dip recession, when in fact it had done nothing of the kind. The OBR suggested that there was a 50:50 chance that the growth rate would be 2.1 per cent next year but that, at the same time, there was a significant chance of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent that growth would be zero—that is, that there would be a double dip.
However, while the assessment and presentation of the uncertainty of forecasts have been greatly improved, no progress has yet been made on the other risks embodied in the Government’s overall fiscal position. For example, it is now clear that for the last decade—and I recognise that this was under the previous Government—tax revenues have been overly dependent on taxation of financial services. The severe problems in financial services contributed disproportionately to the fall in government revenues and to the growth of the deficit. This, which is a sort of all-eggs-in-one-basket problem, is a standard feature of corporate risk analysis and could, with value, be introduced into the analysis of public policy as well. Similarly, everyone is now aware that the UK economy has become seriously unbalanced, which is just the sort of issue that would be highlighted by regular and careful risk analysis. If the OBR were to extend its analysis of uncertainty to include a risk-sensitive analysis of the public finances, it would provide a complementary and extremely valuable service to policy-makers and align public policy-making with the best practice in private policy-making and private risk assessment.
Chapter 4.10.1 of the charter relates risks only to,
“risks surrounding the economic outlook”,
but associates the economic outlook only with the forecast, not with the state of the economy as it is. This amendment focuses attention on a wider concept of risk—the risk inherent in the underlying parameters of the fiscal and economic stance—and, by doing so, extends risk analysis into the areas of best practice that are now found in the private sector. I beg to move.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, I am happy to start by saying that I agree that we should, as far as possible, stick to the technical. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, for confirming that he would like to make this a technical analysis of the Bill.
I agree that it is critical for the OBR to assess the risk to the public finances and that that should be clearly set out. The amendment proposes that this provision should be in the Bill, whereas we propose that it should be in the charter, first focusing on the economic risks and secondly focusing on the fiscal risks. As the noble Lord said, there are references to risks in chapters 4.10.1 and 4.10.2 of the draft charter: the first relates to the economic forecast and the second relates to the forecasting of the public finances. I believe that together those two references to risk give the OBR a clear and wide-ranging remit. I will think about the specific drafting in the light of the points that the noble Lord has made, but I believe that the charter is the right place for this. Clearly, the drafting on the sorts of risks that the OBR looks at should not in any way constrain it from looking at the relevant risks, so I will have a look to make sure that, on reflection, we have got all the risks covered.
The OBR has, of course, a duty to act consistently with the charter, so it should not be necessary to include this provision in the Bill. However, we must get it right in the charter, which is where I think we should leave it. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Eatwell
Gosh, that was quite a loosening up. I think that the noble Lord has taken the point. In my reading, the charter seems to confine risk analysis to the probabilistic analysis of forecasts—to the fan charts and so on. I want to stimulate the OBR to think about the risks inherent in the economic posture, if we may call it that, of the country at any one time. On the two illustrations that I gave, I think that if forecasters, particularly official forecasters, had been sensitive over the last decade to the excessive share of taxation coming from the financial services and had realised the risk of having all one’s eggs in one basket or had been sensitive to the problems associated with the overall balance of the economy, which I know the Government wish to address, we might have had some danger signals hoisted earlier than they were. However, in the context of the Minister’s assurance that he will look at this issue and perhaps amend the charter accordingly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I, too, speak in favour of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. Unlike my noble friend Lord Peston, I am in favour of the OBR. However, I share with my noble friend some anxieties about whether we need another set of economic forecasts. We should warrant another set of forecasts, in particular if the Treasury is going to produce its own, only if those from the OBR prove to be better and more accurate than those produced by commercial forecasters and other bodies. Therefore, it is important that we are able to analyse the forecasts made by the OBR, in order to understand the logic behind them and the assumptions that have been employed. That can best be done—and the veracity, standing and confidence that we wish to have in the OBR supported—if the model used by the OBR is freely available for analysis by peers, commentators and parliamentarians.
I have one question for the Minister. He has advised us that HMT will continue to produce its own economic forecasts. However, he has criticised HMT’s forecasts on the grounds of their accuracy and the spin placed on them by politicians. If he believes that HMT was leant on by politicians, it would be interesting to hear some examples, because during my 18 months in government I saw no evidence of Treasury forecasts underlying government policy being influenced in any way by politicians. The Minister has also criticised the amount of content of HMT’s published forecasts, including the fact that HMT did not publish forecasts for unemployment. Will he confirm that in future HMT will publish a full and comprehensive set of its own economic forecasts, which will in particular include forecasts for employment and unemployment?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, this discussion has been interesting because it confirms how much material the OBR has already published, in its economic and fiscal outlook and alongside it, which enables us to have a richer discussion than we might ever have had in the past. I am grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, is nodding. We have made considerable strides. I do not want to rake over old ground, as the noble Lord, Lord Myners, provokes me into doing, but we must keep coming back to the point that he makes by implication—namely, that we have employment and other forecasts in the 150-page economic and fiscal outlook document. We have many pieces of data that we did not have before and we will continue to have them in future.
I hope that we all agree that there is a huge amount of additional transparency. We have fan charts and all sorts of other things that make clear the basis on which the forecasts have been produced. These forecasts are in no way made or influenced by Ministers or their political advisers. I think that we all agree that transparency is at the root of what we are trying to achieve.
The amendments in this group seek to ensure that the OBR publishes the assumptions, economic analysis, data, methods and costings that it uses to compile its reports. We believe that that is absolutely achieved in the design of the structure that we have put forward. The OBR will have a statutory duty to act transparently. Chapter 4.8 of the charter states that,
“the OBR is to act openly, setting out with clarity the assumptions and judgements that underpin its work. It should proactively seek to make available its analysis”.
Thus the general duty is in the Bill, which is backed up by the wording of the charter that expands on it.
We now have evidence from last Monday’s document and the surrounding publications of the OBR about how it will do this in practice. Perhaps noble Lords have looked at the 20 Excel spreadsheets on the OBR’s website. I suggest that these give convenient access to the forecast data in a way that has not remotely been done before. In addition to those spreadsheets, over 20 separate documents with supplementary information have been published by the OBR since August.
One of the tests of whether this meets the legitimate demands of the most sophisticated external forecasting bodies is what the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted earlier this year, which is that the OBR had by that stage already published more detail than ever before on the assumptions underlying its forecasts and on the impact that changes in those assumptions would have on revenues and spending. We have made a significant step change. A lot of the information is available in electronic form. The construct of the Bill plus the charter achieves what we all want from this.
I turn to the specific points raised, particularly by my noble friend. The OBR has complete discretion over the model that it uses and what methods go around the modelling. In its recent economic and fiscal outlook report, the OBR had already made some adjustments to the methods that it used in June, so it is moving the way in which it has adopted the Treasury model. The Treasury will continue to retain economic and fiscal forecasting expertise because ultimately Ministers need to be supported by a forecasting capability. That will include the possibility of the Treasury continuing to use its own model, but the official forecasts will be those of the OBR.
Baroness Browning
Will my noble friend confirm that, in the event of the Treasury not using the OBR’s forecast, it will give a full explanation of why it differed from the office’s views?
Lord Sassoon
Yes, I can confirm that, although that is not in any way the expectation.
On the specific question of the ITEM Club and the model, the club will no longer have a statutory right to be given a copy of the Treasury model because that arose from the Industry Act 1975, which is being repealed. It will be for the Treasury to consider whether it continues to make the model available, but that will not be a statutory matter any more.
On how the arrangements between the OBR, the Treasury and other parts of government work, that will be set out in the memorandum of understanding, including use of the Treasury economic model, although of course it is entirely at the discretion of the OBR as to what tools, models and methods it uses.
On the question of where the assumptions are to be found, I can certainly find them littered throughout the document published last week, including, for example, table 3.6 on page 67, which as I read it is a mixture of inputs and outputs. There are other assumptions made right through the document.
On the critical question of the approach to economic forecasting raised by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that is summarised in paragraph 3.7 on page 28. I am glad that people find the Treasury monthly report on the latest independent forecasts useful. It is intended that the Treasury will continue to publish that document and make it available on the Treasury website.
I think that the construct between the Bill and the charter covers all the issues on transparency, something that we all seek, and I suggest that the evidence so far of the OBR in practice means that we should have confidence in that construct. On that basis, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, we are grateful to the Minister, who has clarified a number of points. I will come back to an obvious and fundamental one. I am still not in the least clear why we will have both an OBR forecast and an official one from the Treasury that will be useful for Ministers. I simply do not understand this.
Lord Sassoon
Perhaps I may clarify that. There will be one official forecast, which the OBR will produce. The Treasury will retain a modelling and forecasting capability, but it is absolutely not the intention, and will not be the case, that there will be another official forecast from the Treasury. Ministers simply require the Treasury to retain that capability, so that if, in circumstances that we do not at all anticipate, the Chancellor or the Treasury want to take a different view from that of the OBR, they will retain the capability of doing so. There is absolutely no intention that there should be anything other than one published forecast, which will be put out by the OBR.
Lord Eatwell
I do not quite follow that. If the Treasury is going to disagree, or at least have the capability of disagreeing, with a forecast put forward by the OBR, how can it do that other than on the basis of a forecast of its own? I note that the word “published” was slipped into the Minister’s final sentence. Surely if the Treasury is going to have the capability of assessing and disagreeing with the OBR model, it must have some forecast of its own.
Lord Higgins
I find this rather difficult. The Minister raises his eyebrows. I simply do not understand what the purpose of this forecast is going to be. Perhaps I may expand on that for a moment. We had an official forecast and we presume that the Government will operate on that basis, but apparently there is to be an internal forecast on which Ministers will base their decisions. The noble Lord is shaking his head.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, there will not be another official internal forecast. There will be the forecast of the OBR, but that does not mean that the Treasury should not have the capability to—and it will—look at underlying assumptions on which the forecast is based, to make sure that it understands where the OBR is coming from and feels comfortable with it. There will not be some other internal official forecast; there will merely be a capability within the Treasury—and it is important that there should be such a capability—whereby Treasury officials can look at and understand the assumptions on which the OBR’s forecast is made. That will not require, and there is no intention for, the Treasury to produce any separate forecast of its own.
Baroness Browning
My earlier question came from reading the evidence of Professor Wren-Lewis to the Select Committee. He considered that if,
“the Treasury decides that the OBR model is wrong in some sense, I think basically then it is up to the Treasury to decide whether it wants to move to an alternative model or an alternative way of doing things whereby it produces its own forecast and does not rely on the OBR”.
I understand that the Government accepted that when they responded to the Treasury Committee. That was what prompted my earlier question.
Lord Sassoon
I love it when noble Lords preface their remarks by saying, “This may not be the place in which to discuss these things”, and then go into freshwater and saltwater fishing. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has already said that his study of the 20 spreadsheets has raised some questions that he will address directly to Mr Chote. If my noble friend Lord Higgins would like me to relay his questions to Mr Chote, I will be happy to do so—or he may wish to write directly. Either way, I will return to the amendment. We have so much transparency already that it is provoking lots of questions that I am sure Mr Chote and his colleagues will be happy to answer. I will be happy to act as postman if that would be helpful.
Lord Higgins
I gladly accept that offer and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Eatwell
I was hoping to provide space for those who feel as strongly as I do, as apparently does the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to suggest alternative arrangements. Indeed, I have put forward my own proposals, which we will discuss later, but a variety of methods could be suggested.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I, too, am a bit puzzled as to why we are discussing only half the linked story, but my noble friend has it right when she talks about the defective nature of this amendment in taking out the requirement for an assessment of the accuracy of fiscal and economic forecasts. No doubt we shall come to the question of whether there is any other way of doing it later, when I might not be quite so keen on what she has to say. However, I certainly agree with her that it would be inappropriate to remove the requirement for an assessment of the accuracy of the forecasts. It is an important requirement that there should be such an assessment—
Lord Peston
May I interrupt the noble Lord? I am totally puzzled now. The noble Lord uses the word “requirement”. The people who comprise the OBR will not be idiots. They are going to be experts and qualified economists. Quite independent of what is in this Bill, if the forecasting is not working well, they will ask themselves why they got it wrong. There is no need for a requirement here unless you assume that a bunch of morons is going to be appointed to the OBR. If you get a forecast wrong, you immediately ask why you got it wrong. Why is there a need for a requirement to do something that would be a normal way of working?
Baroness Noakes
I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that it is not so much the requirement to do the assessment as the requirement to publish it that is important.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am confused by this, because there are certain other things that I would have thought it would be impossible for the OBR to miss out, such as focusing its forecasts on government economic policies. Where there was a strong wish to put certain things into the Bill that were not there, now it is being said that it is blindingly obvious that the OBR would assess its own performance, so no provision is needed. What goes in the Bill and what does not are matters of judgment. It is my view that this is a sufficiently important matter to justify being included. The noble Lord, Lord Peston, will no doubt be comforted by that, because he has already played back to me the fact that the OBR has stated in its document, Analysis of Past Forecasting Performance, that it is,
“fully committed to transparency, and each year will produce a full and detailed report analysing the accuracy of its economy and fiscal forecasts, and explaining the differences between forecast and outturn”.
It goes on to talk about giving further detail on its forecast methodologies. The office is going to do this anyway and I would like to think that it would be done without the Bill requiring it. However, it is sufficiently important that there should be absolutely no doubting the fact that it will be done.
This is not something that of itself is easy to do. The analysis of forecasting requires fiscal forecasting skills that are in scarce supply. To make the assessment requires access to and full understanding of the data. Critical to the whole process is that actually doing the assessment yourself makes it a learning experience. That goes to the heart of why Mr Chote and his team will do it anyway. We certainly expect to see the OBR doing this and the office has said that it will. However, in the Government’s view the requirement should be on the face of the Bill. In the absence of a discussion that we have not yet had about alternative approaches, I suggest that this is where we need to leave it. For the moment, therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has gone a bit over the top in describing Mr Chote and his colleagues as being “used”. The Statement made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor, to which the noble Lord referred, spoke of an audit of the annual managed expenditure savings. It was not an audit of anything other than one part of the totality of the package that my right honourable friend announced last month. The noble Lord has extrapolated from a relatively small use of the word “audit” into something much bigger that is not justified.
I agree, in a sense, that people such as myself, my noble friend the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, who have an accounting background, tend to think that the term “audit” is reserved for this statutory audit function, has a very specific meaning and applies only to the audit of financial statements. However, the term means only “independent examination”, and in that sense I do not see any reason why the figure should not be used.
However, I say to the noble Lord that even when considering the audit of annual financial statements, those statements contain loads of assumptions and forecasts. To do an impairment review, you have to forecast cash flows for 10 years and choose discount rates and things such as that to calculate the figure that you put on your balance sheet. For your pension liabilities, you have to do even more complex calculations involving even more assumptions about the future. So even “audit” has to deal with these difficult areas of future estimation, even within the concept of statutory audit.
It would be helpful if the Treasury were to be reminded that the term “audit” has a rather technical meaning; it would be better to say something like “has independently examined”. Perhaps the Minister could take back to the Treasury that its lexicon could have that amendment added. I come back to my basic point, though, that the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has gone a little over the top on this amendment.
Lord Sassoon
I am grateful to my noble friend for delivering my script for me. Perhaps I should declare my interest as a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. There is certainly a technical use of the word “audit” that we chartered accountants and other accountants are used to using. As my noble friend Lady Noakes has explained, my right honourable friend was using a more general use of the term. The Chancellor used the phrase in the very specific context of,
“audited all the annually managed expenditure savings”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/10; col. 949.]
To be clear, there is no question of the OBR doing an audit in the sense used by, say, the National Audit Office. In the context in which my right honourable friend used the word “audit”, it is completely clear that he was talking about scrutiny of those particular savings, as set out in the terms of reference given to the OBR when it scrutinised the Government’s policy costings. If the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, wants clarity on the meaning of the word, the terms of reference are clear.
In answer to the questions about the number of contacts between the OBR and the Treasury, that information is now published on its website. Between 4 October and 29 November 2010, there are seven recorded contacts: four e-mails, two meetings and one transmission of a hard-copy document. As I say, all those details are on the OBR’s website for people to look at.
The clarity over the OBR’s role is provided for through the provisions in the Bill and the charter. There is no intention for the OBR to do an audit in the technical sense of the word. I hope that it has been useful to have had this short discussion to clarify that that is indeed the situation and, having agreed that, I do not think that we need to clutter up the Bill in the way that the amendment proposes. On the basis that it is not strictly necessary, I ask the noble Lord if he might withdraw it.
Lord Peston
My Lords, when it suits him, the noble Lord is keen on the casual use of language. Can I take it that “audit” does not now mean audit? Does it mean to scrutinise? Can we see the documentation corresponding to that scrutiny? Is it available?
Lord Sassoon
Indeed, my Lords, as I said, the form of the scrutiny is set out in the terms of reference given to the Office for Budget Responsibility for its review of the spending review and were published as part of the spending review documentation on the Treasury website. If it would help the noble Lord, I can read out the key paragraph of the terms of reference for the Office for Budget Responsibility. Paragraph 4, entitled “Economic and fiscal forecasts”, states:
“The Spending Review will allocate spending between departmental expenditure and annually managed expenditure within the envelope set at the June Budget. As part of the Spending Review, and consistent with the approach taken in the June Budget, the OBR will provide independent scrutiny of the Government’s estimated costing of annually managed expenditure (AME) policies”.
Lord Peston
I am sorry, but I would really like my question to be answered. I do not want to know the form; I want to see the actual scrutiny. Nothing in the big document includes that scrutiny. The Chancellor claimed, using the Minister’s words, that the OBR had scrutinised all these expenditure savings. I should like to see the document which says, “We looked at this and this is our analysis”. I want to see the scrutiny; I do not want to know how the office did it. I want to know that it was actually done. I have not the faintest idea of where to look for this scrutiny, but it is not in the big document—which is what I call it because I cannot remember its name. Where is it?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the scrutiny is one of the things that underpin what the noble Lord calls “the big document”. If the OBR had any questions about the AME numbers, it would litter its document with commentary on it. However, it is quite clear from the terms of reference given to the office by the Treasury that it was required to and did scrutinise the AME numbers and was free to make any comments it felt like making on them.
Lord Peston
I would like to see where they are. I know the difference between form and substance, and I would like to see the substance.
Lord Sassoon
I would need to go back to the Treasury website, but I believe that in among all the supplementary documents there is a commentary. That is on the website, but I do not have with me the suite of documents which back up the big document. However, I believe that the material is set out in the supplementary documents. I would be happy to send the noble Lord a reference for where to find it.
Lord Myners
Before we rush away to look for this information on the website, let me say this: the noble Lord is a Minister within the Treasury and shares a floor with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so no doubt he can give us some sense of how this scrutiny operated. I am trying to imagine in my mind’s eye the 12 or so employees of the OBR scrutinising annually managed expenditure. I am trying to imagine how they would look at the AME of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, let alone its subdivisions, or the AME of the Department for Work and Pensions. Can the Minister at least give us a flavour of how that work was conducted? That would whet our appetites before we see the full information on the website, as he has assured us we can.
Lord Sassoon
As the noble Lord knows very well, if he would like to ask the question, I will pass it on to Mr Chote and his colleagues who, I am sure, would be happy to answer on how they carried out those parts of their remit. It is for them to say how they carried out their remit, and if the question has not been answered satisfactorily by the information already published on the website, I am sure that they would be happy to respond to further questions. Again, I offer my services as post boy, if the noble Lord would like me to pass on the question.
Lord Myners
I am not sure that the answer is entirely satisfactory. The Chancellor described this as an audit. He went beyond the language used by the OBR. We are asking the Minister of the Crown, based in the Treasury, to give us a sense of how this scrutiny was conducted. I am beginning to feel that the Minister does not know the answer. If that is the case, it would be helpful if he said, “I have no idea how this was scrutinised”, after which the Committee could form its own view.
Lord Eatwell
While agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I think that there is an important point here. If there is a process of scrutiny that is designed to give us a degree of confidence in the Government's costings and in the forecasts made by the OBR, it would be helpful to know, when the OBR scrutinises the costings by the various departments of their savings, whether it agrees with them 100 per cent. If it does, that would be very disturbing and unfortunate: it would be like an old Soviet election. We would expect a degree of disagreement—perhaps not much, but a bit—which would give us confidence in the scrutiny process. It would be helpful if the Minister would tell us whether in the scrutiny process the agreement was 100 per cent or rather less.
Lord Sassoon
I am grateful to my noble friend for trying to bring this back into perspective. Of course the OBR scrutiny, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, acknowledged just now, will be based on challenging the assumptions underpinning the AME costings. How it then formed the judgments that it did is for the office, not me, to interpret. However, I am happy to point noble Lords towards what has been published and see whether there is anything else that the OBR thinks would be helpful to say on the matter after the discussion this afternoon. Clearly, the OBR will not sign off on its scrutiny of AME savings if it does not think that the methodology and the numbers are reasonable.
Lord Barnett
My Lords, there is no need for noble Lords to waste their time looking at websites. I submitted a Written Question to the Minister asking when the OBR scrutinised these particular points. The Answer stated that the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, passed my question to Robert Chote, who quickly gave me an answer. He referred in particular to chapter 3 of the 150-page document. I went through chapter 3 very carefully. Like the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I could not see in the whole of the chapter any details about scrutiny—far from it. Chapter 3.2 states:
“This is our central projection, or in other words, we believe there is an equal likelihood that growth will turn out to be higher or lower than we forecast”.
How do you scrutinise that? Or perhaps you should audit it. Or perhaps I have been going over the top, as the noble lady, Baroness Noakes, said. If I really wanted to go over the top, noble Lords on the Committee would know that they have heard nothing yet.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, seems to think that she is still sitting on the Front Bench. I do not mind that. She was very good on the Front Bench. Occasionally she got it right. However, today she tells me that I am over the top. I wish someone, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, would explain where I am over the top. I have said that Robert Chote is being used by the Treasury. That is undoubtedly the case, and all that this brief debate has done is emphasise that. Indeed, the Minister has still not replied, or perhaps he has accidentally overlooked replying, to my Question about how often since or before this report Robert Chote and his colleagues met the Chancellor and other Ministers.
Lord Sassoon
Forgive me, but I went through the detail of what was published on the OBR’s website by Mr Chote, and I shall say it again. According to the document released by the OBR on its website, between 4 October and 29 November 2010 there have been seven substantive contacts between the OBR and Treasury Ministers, special advisers and their private office staff, including four e-mails, two meetings and one transmission of a hard-copy document. The details of the two meetings are included in the log on the website. I have tried to give this information and I repeat it now. There have been two meetings—on 4 November and 18 November. The details are set out on the website.
Lord Barnett
I must tell the noble Lord that I may not be doing my job properly, but I do not spend my life going through Treasury or OBR websites. Perhaps I should; it might make me better informed. I would not go “over the top”, as the noble Baroness described me. I doubt it. It might make me even more so. The noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, has now told us information that I confess I had not read on the website. It may be that every other Member of the Committee has read it on the website.
Lord Burns
My Lords, I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Newby. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, knows that what he is asking for is impossible; we also know that he can be very good at creating a little bit of mischief every now and again and we have to see this amendment in that light.
The OBR can be responsible only for its own documents; it cannot possibly hold the Chancellor to account. That is a job for Parliament, including the Treasury Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee. I can think of nothing that would make the job of the OBR more impossible than to give it a task that began to resemble this. The key thing is that the OBR has to be kept out of the political debate but the noble Lord, Lord Myners, implies that he would like to plunge it directly into that debate. I am sure he has used the amendment as a vehicle to make quite sensible points about some of the practices that occur from time to time, but the OBR will not protect us from those.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Myners, accused himself of being churlish. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, accused him merely of creating mischief. I offer no view, but agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and with my noble friend Lord Newby, that his amendment would widen the OBR’s remit into completely inappropriate and vastly different territory from that covered by the Bill. The very focused remit in the Bill covers forecasts and the sustainability of the fiscal position. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, talked about the OBR commenting on the presentation of its report by the Chancellor—which would be difficult, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Burns—but his amendment goes much wider and is concerned with commenting on major economic statements, which covers a huge range of things well beyond the OBR's focus. I come back to the concerns that were expressed by noble Lords at Second Reading about the critical importance of the impartiality of the OBR. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said:
“I am sure it is right that the OBR should not become embroiled in political controversy”.—[Official Report, 8/11/10; cols. 16-17.]
That is exactly where the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Myners, would take it—well beyond the sustainability of the public finances, which should be its remit. I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Myners
My Lords, far be it from me to wish to cause mischief. I have listened with great interest to the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Burns, and of the Minister. The Minister is correct that the wording of my amendment is very wide—wider than the OBR itself. However, I have often found it helpful in life to start wide, listen to the wise comments of others and narrow down. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, suggested that the word “balance” was capable of widely differing definitions, which would raise issues of implementation, and that possibly the phrase “absence of bias” might be better. I will reflect on that before Report. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Peston
My Lords, of course I tabled Amendment 29 before I had heard the Minister’s replies to many other amendments. What he emphasised most was the independence of the OBR and its ability to make up its own mind what it wants to do. I assume therefore that when I say it should be able to do this, he will get up and say that it can if it wants to. I do not think that I need to detain the Committee much longer, but I would like to hear the Minister confirm that the OBR can do what it wants. I beg to move.
Lord Sassoon
I shall try to be almost as brief. I agree absolutely that the OBR should have access to external expertise and that there should be appropriate transparency around this. The design of the OBR will allow it to have access to external expertise as it sees fit, and indeed the office held a range of discussions prior to producing the recent forecast. The office may convene advisory panels if it thinks that that sort of external perspective would be of help.
My only difficulty with the amendment is that the office would be required to publish the evidence taken from expert witnesses. I think that it should be for the OBR to determine what it thinks it is appropriate to publish. That is because we do not want to constrain freedom of exchange. The office has a general statutory duty to act transparently, within which context obviously it will think carefully about what it should publish. Further, although I hope that it will not be necessary, there is of course the backstop of the Freedom of Information Act to which the OBR is subject. I think we should leave it to the discretion of the OBR to choose to publish evidence from such experts as it consults.
I hope that my response has given the noble Lord, Lord Peston, the confirmation that he was seeking, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Peston
I thank the Minister very much for that answer. I, too, am making the assumption that the OBR will read our debates and therefore know what we think. Subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Burns
My Lords, for the reasons that I have set out about the importance of the political impartiality of the OBR, I felt that the original subsection (3), although a little inelegant, did much of its job. However, I also support the spirit of Amendment 31, although I am a little concerned about the use of “effects”, which could in future give someone the opportunity to ask to have particular subsections of government measures analysed for their effects on the economic outcome and on the public finances. I worry that going down that road could cause problems in future.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, perhaps I might go back to confirming what we are seeking to do and not to do in the Bill. We have discussed all these related issues at some length. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has got it pretty much spot on in terms of what we are trying to achieve, but for the avoidance of doubt I shall restate it.
With regard to the core forecasting remit, the intention is that the OBR should consider government policies and not other policies. To take the point made the other day by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, we want to ensure that the OBR can take account of external shocks, for example, so in technical drafting terms his amendment would not quite work as it focuses narrowly on policy. We agree, anyway, that it is the Government’s policies and not other policies that need to be considered. We must not leave out the fact that, in doing the forecasts, the OBR can look at scenarios and at other issues.
With regard to the noble Lord’s specific question about an EU-related policy, either it has been adopted by the UK Government and is therefore included in government policies or it is not. Either the EU policy example has been adopted as policy in the UK or it has not, therefore it falls accordingly. That would get picked up, so that much is clear. Equally, it is the clear intention that the OBR should not be drawn into costing alternative policies, whether they are opposition policies or just other scenarios or partial packages of policies. That is what is intended by the construct in the Bill, and part of it is clarified by paragraph 4.12 in the draft charter.
Even though I am convinced that the Bill achieves what most, if not all, of us are trying to achieve in these various respects, I take to heart the fact that we have spent a lot of time going around the interaction of Clauses 4 and 5(3) and, to an extent, the relationship with Clause 1. Notwithstanding the fact that I think that the Bill works as drafted, I am listening carefully to all the points being made. I will go away and see whether anything can be done to make it even clearer in the Bill what the intentions are. However, it is difficult drafting. We should certainly not take out Clause 5(3) in its entirety, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, pointed out, we want to make sure not only that the forecasts are concentrated on the right thing but that the OBR is not drawn into other political controversies.
Lord Peston
Can the noble Lord give one clarification on that? We all agree that, if we are going to have an OBR, we must keep it out of political controversy, but do the “government policies” to which he referred include the behaviour of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England?
Lord Sassoon
When I talk about government policies, I mean government policies. What assumptions the OBR makes about monetary conditions, interest rates and so on touches on an issue about which my noble friend Lord Higgins asked earlier. I have undertaken to relay his request to see whether Mr Chote wants to say any more about how the OBR considers monetary policy issues. Certainly, while I said that the OBR should consider government policies, there are lots of other things that it needs to consider. It is clear that it is making assumptions about interest rates and so on that are taken broadly from what the Bank of England lays out.
Lord Peston
Since we are putting this on the statute book, is it the case that the OBR would not be offending the law, as it will eventually be, by paying great attention to what the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England was up to? I merely want some reassurance on that. There is no way in which it can do any forecasting unless it does that.
Lord Sassoon
I assume that in all normal circumstances it will look intently at the forecasts of the MPC about future inflation and interest rate prospects.
Lord Burns
Perhaps I may help the noble Lord, Lord Peston. One must assume that the Monetary Policy Committee will abide by the law under which it conducts its affairs.
Lord Sassoon
In summary, I cannot promise that there is any way of making all this clearer. I think that there is consensus among us as to what we are trying to achieve in this area. I shall think hard about whether we can make it even clearer. On that basis, I ask my noble friend Lord Higgins to consider withdrawing his amendment.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, that is a very sensible reaction on the part of the Minister.
Lord Turnbull
I support the amendment, at least in so far as it relates to Clause 5(2), for much the same reasons as those set out by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. These words are meant to be drawn either from the seven tenets of public life set by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, or from the synonyms for them in the Civil Service Code. If there is any amendment to be made it is that Clause 5(2) should bring the words used into line with the accepted vocabulary that is used in these other documents. You would then dispense with Clause 6(1)(b) as it relates to subsection (2).
At Second Reading, the most telling criticisms that were made on an occasion where this initiative was largely welcomed, was the sense that independence was being granted with one hand by the Treasury and that another clause subtly began to claw it back, and that this somehow undermined the sense of true independence. We can dispense with this and, if any changes are desired, the wording of Clause 5(2) can be brought into line with the vocabulary that is used in these other statements of the values of public life.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I find this interesting because what the noble Lords, Lord Eatwell and Lord Turnbull, have said exemplifies why we need some back-up explanation of these terms in the charter. That must be the right place for it because the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, started by saying that we could rely on the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the three terms but then went on to refer to the usage given to the terms by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That in itself points out that, even on his construction of how these words should be used, there are at least two sources. I have neither the OED nor the committee’s statement in front of me, but I would be surprised if they were precisely the same. Then the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, referred to the Civil Service Code.
In arguing for the amendment, the noble Lords have precisely explained the difficulty that we are in: however you do it, you go back to different sources for the meaning of these important terms. It is therefore important in the charter to try to tease this out. I agree that this could be done in a number of ways; it could refer to the OED, the Civil Service or a number of other things. However, this discussion has reinforced my view that somewhere we need to provide some guidance.
I shall give the Committee another example, very much in this space, about the kind of difficulty that we can otherwise get into, and this relates back to one of our previous discussions. The US Congressional Budget Office has an impartiality remit, but it defines “impartiality” to mean that it has to include analysis of policy proposals made by all political parties. I think that we all agreed earlier that that is precisely what we do not want the OBR to do, and that suggests to me that it is a reason why we need to give a bit of guidance in the charter for what the three critical terms mean. Indeed, Robert Chote himself, following questions on impartiality, told the Treasury Select Committee:
“I think you want to make sure that the remit of the OBR is agreed ex ante, rather than the subject of a contentious debate ex post on whether it is doing what people want it to do … if it is left to the OBR on its own to draw the line, there will always be people just below the line who will be disgruntled … which will reflect on the OBR”.
That was in the context of a wider discussion about the virtues of, and the need for, clarity.
Nothing is set out in the charter that can undermine the Bill. The guidance can relate only to functions conferred by the Bill; it cannot add to or distort them. Further, as we have noted, the charter must be approved by another place before it can come into effect. I have listened carefully to the debate, which has suggested to me that even those who say that we do not need the interpretation of the charter are actually using different definitions. I think that the charter is the right place in which to provide the OBR with the clarity that it quite rightly seeks. For that reason, and because the noble Lord admits that the amendment does not quite work technically, I ask him to withdraw it.
Lord Eatwell
I am grateful to the noble Lord. If we get Clause 5(3) right, it may work very well, but we have been chewing this matter over perhaps to excess. The Minister made one point about the issue of impartiality with respect to the Congressional Budget Office. While there is some relationship between the CBO and the OBR, the Congressional Budget Office is actually a creature of Congress. That is different from the OBR, which is a creature of the Executive. It means that we have a very different issue before us.
I am still disturbed by the definition of “objectively”. As I pointed out, the notion of merit and demerit is rather difficult in and of itself, and therefore, in preparing for the final draft of the charter, I would like the Government to consider whether the word “merits” conveys exactly what they want it to.
Lord Sassoon
I am not sure whether this will help, but just to be clear, we are expecting the OBR to assess the impact of policies on forecasts. So there is no question of merits and demerits, other than that we are trying to exclude all questions of merit and demerit and keep to the factual impact of policies. I am struggling a bit with any suggestion that we are somehow dragging the OBR into considerations of merit or demerit. The noble Lord took the example of employment and unemployment. All we ask of the OBR is that it should tell us what the factual situation is and absolutely not to comment on its merits or demerits. There is no question of enormity of judgment by the OBR in this or any other respect.
The basic underlying language here is the same as that which applies to the National Audit Office in the National Audit Office Act 1983. That is all we are trying to replicate in this respect, even though this is scrutiny and not audit.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, the amendment, which has a whole clause to itself, is not difficult to understand. The Bill as drafted states:
“The Office must aim to carry out its functions efficiently and cost-effectively”.
The amendment seeks to delete the words “aim to” so that it reads, “The Office must carry out its functions efficiently and cost-effectively”. There would be a loophole if the office could simply say that it was aiming to do this when it may not achieve that objective. More sensibly it should be mandated to operate efficiently and cost-effectively, otherwise it may overspend its budget by an enormous amount and say, “Do not worry, these are unforeseen circumstances. We aim to do it”. I beg to move.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, of course the OBR should be cost-effective and efficient—there is no question about that—and the amendment seeks to increase the requirement for it to be so. However, in reality the amendment would not change in substance the requirement on the OBR because, if it was ever challenged on this point, the challenge would be subject to what it would have been reasonable for the OBR to have done. I agree with my noble friend that it would be nice if we could have more direct language here but I am advised that the amendment would make negligible difference. That is because if it was ever tested in a legal context—one hopes it will not be—the reasonableness of what the OBR had done would be encapsulated in the words “aim to”.
At the risk of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, jumping up again, I have to say that this is the same as the requirement on the National Audit Office, as set out in Part 2. It is not necessarily a good defence; I merely observe—
Lord Sassoon
Of course, in the wider context, the accounting officer will have to answer for the OBR’s cost-effectiveness and efficiency and it will be subject to the normal governance and scrutiny arrangements for public bodies. Those scrutiny arrangements will include an audit, I say advisedly, by the NAO, which will have the power to examine and report to Parliament on a number of matters, including the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the OBR.
I thank my noble friend for trying to tease out what is going on here. It has enabled me to ask questions and to establish that the words as originally drafted essentially encapsulate the test that a court would use if the OBR was ever challenged. On the basis that we are trying to arrive at the same point, I hope he will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Higgins
It will be a question of it coming not to court but to the NAO, which is dealt with in the second part of the Bill. It seems to me that the office would have been on much stronger ground if it was simply told that it must carry out these functions than if it merely said, “Oh well, if it’s all right, I was aiming to but I’ve failed”. None the less, to a degree I take the point made by my noble friend and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.