Professor Michael McMahon:

It disagrees with some of the things we say. We were actually chatting about this earlier. Our mandate, as we read out at the start of each of these meetings, is to endorse the macro forecasts and assess them, which we do, and beyond that it is to assess. We assess and we put our assessment forward. Friends of mine have asked is it difficult if the Government listens or does not, but it is absolutely right that politicians in a democracy make the big choices. We will assess and we will make those known. The press will give the Government of the day a hard time, the committee will get evidence it can take to the Government and ask questions and make criticism, and that is how it should work. The Government may criticise how we choose to account for it and we can disagree on lots of things, but I think most people agree on the issue of relabelling something that is ordinarily accounted in one place and putting is somewhere else. We will continue to do what we think is best on how to treat these numbers and we will present our assessments as we always do.