The point of it is not some big list of rules. The point is to have some kind of independent body that will say – no, that can’t be right – an institutional Governor’s Eyebrow, if you will.

And yes, I take your point about problems of independence and recruitment and group-think, but I do think there is a place for an independent body to say “This is the ‘economic’ answer” but then leave the political stuff to the politicians.

There are two things I don’t like about Brown’s idea. Firstly, it distorts what I regard to be a very important constitutional principle that no Parliament should bind its successor. Secondly, setting in stone how much we should be borrowing in the future takes away a lot of freedom from future Governments. Sometimes using deficits and borrowing is justified and necessary. The US during the Great Depression is a great example. Indeed, it is rather a shame that the British Government didn’t act in a more proactive manner in the 1920s and 1930s to tackle the misery of mass unemployment using some kind of borrowing.

Regarding the idea of an independent body who can say ‘stop spending’, I’m not convinced by this. Such bodies can never be truly independent. Would it be full of people who always abide by certain economic dogmas – free to place a veto on a Government who decide to use a neo Keynesian approach to tackle unemployment? Would it be staffed by the kind of economic ‘experts’ who helped get us into this mess in the first place. The level of spending and borrowing is a particularly important economic tool that the Government can use in times of crisis. People may not agree with this but I think it is only right that an unelected body cannot tell an elected body what to do. An elected Government should be held accountable for its economic policy – rather than having its hands tied by, or passing the buck to, an unelected body.