Attacks on the government’s independent economic forecaster from left and right of the political spectrum are akin to “shooting the messenger”, according to an influential group of MPs.
The Treasury committee rejected “siren calls to fundamentally reform” the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and said it should not be blamed when policymakers had to make tough decisions because of tight public finances.
However, the MPs said they were persuaded that ministers should consider instructing the OBR to adopt a 10-year economic forecast to complement the five- and 50-year forecasts that it already publishes.
Parliament should also set aside time to debate the OBR’s annual fiscal risks and sustainability report, which sets out threats to the stability of public finances over the next 50 years.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, said critics of the OBR had sought to characterise it as “a wielder of dark powers with a stranglehold on Treasury ministers and officials”.
But she said a review by the committee had found “it’s simply not true”.
Hillier said: “The fiscal rules, and therefore the OBR’s forecasts, become more important when government spending operates on razor-thin margins. That is a feature of decision-making by chancellors, not overreach by the OBR.”
after newsletter promotion
The OBR was set up in 2010 by the then chancellor George Osborne to provide independent forecasts of economic growth and assess the impact of the government’s tax and spending policies.
Since then, it has come under fire for allegedly underestimating the impact of successive austerity budgets under Osborne’s chancellorship and, more recently, overestimating the growth potential of the economy.
Prof Jo Michell, an economist at the University of the West of England, and Dr Robert Calvert Jump, an economist at the University of Greenwich, told the committee that the OBR’s forecasts about the level of spare financial capacity, often referred to as headroom, at the end of a five-year forecast had come to dictate government spending policies.
“The OBR has evolved into a body that determines the bounds of permissible fiscal policy, despite lacking the democratic mandate to fulfil such a role […] It does not merely produce forecasts; it determines whether the government passes or fails its fiscal rules. As a result, its ‘headroom’ figures have become the binding constraint on policy,” they said.
The latest review by the Treasury committee followed the resignation in December 2025 of chair Richard Hughes after the OBR’s assessment of the previous budget was leaked.
Hillier said: “Now is the time to preserve the independent voice within our economic debate, not attempt to undermine it. I would like to hear our new chancellor and the wider administration make that point clearly and regularly.
“I do, however, think there is merit in looking at both the potential longer-term effects of government policies and the possible path of the economy further out. While these will be highly uncertain, it can help to start a debate on how to break the cycle of short-term thinking, which so often holds this country back.”
