Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Peston and Lord Burns

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Grand Committee

[Lord Peston]

I did not create this problem. I did not set this body up. Unlike all other noble Lords present, I do not happen to be much in favour of it, but that is another matter. The fact is that our duty in this House, when a piece of legislation is going through, is to make it better. That is our role. So this is not my responsibility, but my point is that if we are going to have such a body, whose essence is its independence, if it turns out that the staff are secondees, that undermines its independence. It will not be independent any more.

[Lord Burns]

I support my noble friend Lord Turnbull and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. This amendment is totally unrealistic. To imagine that one should bar secondees from this kind of activity is extraordinary. There can be no real career structure within the OBR. There are specific sets of jobs and there will be little potential for advancement. It is bound to provide activities that people will take on for a certain period, after which they will move on to do something else. Inevitably, they will wish to hold on to their employment in a department which actually offers them the possibility of a career structure.

I think that the noble Lord hugely underestimates the independent-mindedness of many civil servants. During my time in the Treasury, and I am sure subsequent to that, we had many secondees from other departments who would work in our expenditure divisions. They would work effectively in support of the Treasury by running, very often, the expenditure policies relating to the departments from which they had been seconded. I had no difficulty with this. Indeed, when I first joined the Treasury, my noble friend Lord Kerr was on secondment from the Foreign Office to the Treasury in order to carry out the expenditure work of the MoD. These are everyday, bread-and-butter activities for civil servants, and I am confident that they can work very effectively.

Clearly there would be a problem if the executive members of the OBR were on secondment from the Treasury, but I assume that that is not what is in mind and that the mechanisms which have been put in place in terms of their appointments will safeguard against that. However, we must be realistic about these arrangements. As long as the senior people in the OBR are appointed under the correct processes so that they are independent, it should be for them to recruit the people who they think can carry out the tasks most effectively. To surround that with lots of restrictions is not only unrealistic but, as my noble friend Lord Turnbull said, very damaging.