Do you check how well your forecasts have performed?

Yes. Parliament requires us to look back at our forecasts once a year. We do that in our Forecast evaluation reports. This involves breaking down the differences between our forecasts and subsequent outturns into those that can be attributed to changes in how the ONS records the data, subsequent Government policy changes, unexpected economic developments and other factors. The approach we use is described in a dedicated briefing paper on evaluating forecast accuracy. We recently undertook a comprehensive look at the OBR’s overall forecasting record since we were established in 2010 in Working paper No.19: The OBR’s forecast performance.