"It is the duty of the Office to examine and report on the sustainability of the public finances"
In this paper, we take a comprehensive look at the evolution of the significant and widening gap in the amount of income tax paid per person in Scotland and Wales relative to the UK as a whole, exploring the drivers behind the changes in order to identify trends that should be factored into our devolved…
Since its creation, the OBR has scrutinised over 250 policy costings relating to changes in the benefits and tax credits systems. This paper looks back at how our scrutiny of those policy costings has evolved by reviewing ten case studies of major welfare policy changes taken from the 41 welfare policy announcements made by the…
Over the last five years, the OBR has made great efforts to understand and analyse the fiscal implications of climate change. To date, our analysis has focused primarily on mitigation risks, most notably in the climate change chapter of our 2021 Fiscal risks report (FRR) which provided the UK’s first comprehensive estimate of the fiscal…
On 5 September the Chancellor announced that the Autumn Statement 2023 will be held on Wednesday 22 November and commissioned us to publish our latest outlook for the economy and public finances that day. We have now agreed the timetable for the forecast process and published the detail below.
Our latest working paper, The OBR’s forecast performance, provides a comprehensive evaluation of the OBR’s economic and fiscal forecasting record since we were established in 2010. We assess how our 27 forecasts have performed against outturn over the past 13 years and look at how our forecasting record compares to other UK and international forecasters….
In early 2023, we sought expressions of interest for membership of our advisory panel from academics, economists, researchers and industry specialists with expertise in at least one of these six categories: macroeconomics and econometrics; public sector finances and public economics; financial markets and corporate finance; energy and climate change; health and longevity; and labour market…
The Chancellor has approved the appointment of Baroness Hogg and Dame Susan Rice as non-executive members of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Sarah Hogg and Susan Rice have been appointed to continue the work of the oversight board and audit committee as Sir Chris Kelly and Bronwyn Curtis CBE complete their final terms over the…
Andy King will step down as fiscal expert on the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee following the conclusion of his five-year term at the end of August. Andy joined the OBR in 2013 as Chief of Staff and was appointed to the BRC in 2018. Before that, he worked in the Treasury in a variety of…
We have published our latest long-term assumptions, consistent with the forecast in our March 2023 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO). These economic determinants that underpin our long-term fiscal projections are used by organisations inside and outside government to inform their own long-term modelling.
Several of the UK’s tax bases are directly linked to activities that generate greenhouse gas emissions, with others indirectly linked. So as emissions fall as the UK transitions to net zero, receipts generated from these emissions-linked taxes will be affected. In this working paper, we conduct an initial, high-level analysis to explore the proportion of…