Office for Budget Responsibility

Lord Peston Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I thank my noble friend for reminding us that independence is at the core of what the OBR is about and key to its permanent design. The Chancellor will shortly receive the advice of Sir Alan Budd on the setting-up of the OBR and I am sure that Sir Alan will consider the various factors that my noble friend mentioned.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, did I hear the Minister right when he said, I think, that the fan charts that are to be found in the Budd committee’s report are best practice? In fact, as a matter of technical economics, they are not. Best practice is to publish confidence limits with appropriate probability distributions, which all the independent forecasters do—the Treasury is perfectly aware of that because it publishes their forecasts on the website. Given that the Government wish to save public expenditure, is not the best thing that can possibly happen the abolition of this body before it starts wasting even more money?