Does the OBR have too much power?

Independent forecaster was a 'once-gentle advisory organisation'. Has it now become the Treasury's 'puppet-master'?

Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer
OBR rules 'forced' Rachel Reeves to make 'hasty decisions', say critics
(Image credit: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Rachel Reeves' Spring Statement has once again thrown into question the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), with claims that the quango holds too much sway over the UK's fiscal policy.

The "increasingly influential role of the OBR" was the "most remarkable" thing about the statement, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator. Reeves was forced to take "hasty decisions to restore a thin £9.9 billion 'headroom' needed for emergencies", said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. These include the "controversial" move to "slash Personal Independence Payments to disabled people". The OBR, a "once-gentle advisory organisation", has become the "puppet master".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Jamie Timson is the UK news editor, curating The Week UK's daily morning newsletter and setting the agenda for the day's news output. He was first a member of the team from 2015 to 2019, progressing from intern to senior staff writer, and then rejoined in September 2022. As a founding panellist on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast, he has discussed politics, foreign affairs and conspiracy theories, sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. In between working at The Week, Jamie was a senior press officer at the Department for Transport, with a penchant for crisis communications, working on Brexit, the response to Covid-19 and HS2, among others.