Office for Budget Responsibility

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for the clarification, but to compare the process around the formulation of a report by the OBR with the release of numbers by the ONS is to compare chalk and cheese.

[Lord Newby]

I begin by agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who said that what is most welcome about this report is the extent to which it explains the uncertainties that the Government face in producing detailed economic forecasts. I also find the fan charts very welcome. It is extraordinary that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, finds them risible when they are used, as the Minister said, by the Bank of England and reflect a better view of reality than a single headline figure.

When the Office for Budget Responsibility was being established, the Government said that its members would be available to give evidence to relevant parliamentary committees. Given the importance of the work of the office, will the Minister urge its members to come before the relevant committee of your Lordships’ House—namely, the Economic Affairs Committee—so that there can be a forensic discussion of their work, along the lines that noble Lords would clearly like to see?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby. I will certainly pass on his request that members of the OBR come forward as he suggested. I am sure they would want to. It would reinforce the fact that, as they clearly set out in the foreword to their document, all the judgments in the forecast have been made or agreed by the Office for Budget Responsibility. There has been no ministerial involvement, so it would be entirely right that the office, rather than Treasury Ministers or anybody else, should answer for its forecasts.