The Charter for Budget Responsibility requires that the OBR provides “independent scrutiny and certification of the Government’s policy costings”. Briefing paper No. 6: Policy costings and our forecast describes how we approach the costings process, including the roles of the Treasury and other relevant departments, and how we incorporate the impact of policy measures in…

Robert Chote has given written and oral evidence to the Treasury Committee on the costing of party policy proposals in the run up to general elections.    

Our Autumn Statement forecast was published on 5 December alongside the Autumn Statement. It contains forecasts for the UK economy and public finances to 2018-19 and our assessment of whether the Government is likely to achieve its fiscal mandate and supplementary target. The full document and supporting information is available on the main EFO page.

The Chancellor and Robert Chote have exchanged letters on the role the OBR will take in assessing the Government’s performance against the welfare cap that it intends to introduce at Budget 2014.  

December 2013 All policy costings presented to the Office for Budget Responsibility at Autumn Statement 2013 were scrutinised and certified. The Autumn Statement 2013 policy costings document sets out the methodologies underpinning these various costings. The OBR identified costings for policy measures which it deemed to be particularly uncertain – these are listed in annex A…

Robert Chote and Ed Balls have exchanged letters on the latter’s proposal that the OBR should provide independent scrutiny and certification of political parties’ proposed manifesto commitments on spending and tax.

The economy has recovered much more slowly over the past three years than the OBR expected, but the impact on the public finances has been relatively modest in large part because our over-optimism has been concentrated in those areas of nominal income and spending that are relatively lightly taxed: investment rather than consumer spending and…

The OBR uses a large-scale macroeconomic model to help produce our economic forecast. Briefing paper No. 5: The macroeconomic model sets out a detailed description of the latest version of the model.

This speech by Robert Chote describes the role of the OBR and how it compares to the structure of other fiscal councils around the world. It also looks at how the OBR has made a difference to the fiscal forecasting process and improved transparency of the official forecasts for the UK economy and public finances.

Our third Fiscal sustainability report published on 17 July shows that further tax increases or spending cuts are likely to be needed after the current fiscal consolidation to help meet the costs of an ageing population

Robert Chote has written a letter to Andrew Tyrie MP in response to the TSC report on Budget 2013.  

Robert Chote discussed what difference the creation of the OBR had made to UK fiscal policy in the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ Spring Lecture in London      

Our Budget forecast was published on 20 March alongside the Budget. It contains forecasts for the UK economy and public finances to 2017-18 and our assessment of whether the Government is likely to achieve its fiscal mandate and supplementary target. The full document and supporting information is available on the main EFO page.

March 2013 All policy costings presented to the Office for Budget Responsibility at Budget 2013 were scrutinised and certified. The Budget 2013 policy costings document sets out the methodologies underpinning these various costings. The OBR identified costings for policy measures which it deemed to be particularly uncertain – these are listed in annex B of the…

Robert Chote has written a letter to the Prime Minister today regarding the reference to the OBR in the speech of March 7th on the economy.