Charter for Budget Responsibility

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:29 pm on 6 February 2023.

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Photo of Kit Malthouse Kit Malthouse The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice 8:29, 6 February 2023

I guess the issue is: whose forecasts are they? If the OBR produces forecasts and Treasury officials say, “Well, Chancellor, we have looked over the forecasts and we think they are right,” that is qualitatively different, in the public’s mind, to the Treasury producing a forecast and the OBR saying to the public, “Well, we have looked over them and we think they are right.” While it does say that the Treasury reserves the right to disagree with the OBR, the nature of the iterative process presumably means that will never happen, because they agree before anything is published.