Author Archives: Harriet Price

Sir Charles Bean to join OBR

The Treasury Select Committee has approved the appointment of Sir Charles Bean, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and currently Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, to join the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee.

Sir Charles Bean nominated to join OBR

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has nominated Sir Charles Bean, LSE professor and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, to join the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee. If the nomination is approved by the Treasury Select Committee, he would formally join the OBR at the beginning of 2017 (hence after the Autumn Statement), replacing…

Fiscal sustainability analytical papers

Following the cancellation of our 2016 Fiscal sustainability report we have published three Fiscal sustainability analytical papers today. They cover: the public sector balance sheet; the longer-term effects of student loan policy announcements over the past year; and how changes in mortality rate assumptions in the latest population projections would affect state pensions spending.  …

Supplementary forecast information release

Since the publication of our March 2016 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) we have received a request to publish further detail of our universal credit caseload forecasts. We have published this new supplementary forecast information on the main EFO page of our website.

New releases published tomorrow

Monthly commentary on the public finances – afternoon Public finances data for June 2016 will be published by the ONS and HM Treasury tomorrow, 21 July 2016, at 9:30am. Our regular monthly commentary will be published by early afternoon. It is worth noting that most of the period covered by these data preceded the EU…

Annual report and accounts 2015-16

Our Annual report and accounts detail our budget and finances for 2015-16, audited by the National Audit Office. It also sets out our achievements, details of our staffing structure, operations and our most recent budget settlement, which reflects the recommendations of the 2015 HM Treasury Review of the OBR.

Statement on our work following the EU referendum

In light of the vote to leave the European Union in last week’s referendum – and given the remit set out for us by Parliament in primary and secondary legislation – we have set out the OBR’s role in assessing the potential implications for the economy and public finances.

Response to Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee

Robert Chote has written to the Work and Pensions Select Committee in reply to a letter from the Chair. The Committee requested further information on the process of certification of Universal Credit policy costings and clarification of details of the savings associated with changing the assumed rollout profile of the policy.

Working paper No.8: Anti-avoidance costings: an evaluation

Working paper No. 8: Anti-avoidance costings: an evaluation, looks back at the costings of recently announced anti-avoidance measures to assess their performance against the original costing. It finds that whilst a large number of measures perform close to expectations, there are on average more under-performing measures than over-performing ones.