Chancellor George Osborne has nominated Robert Chote for re-appointment as chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for a second term of office
Chote, who was previously director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, was the first permanent chairman of the OBR when it was created in 2010 to bring greater independence, transparency and credibility to UK economic and fiscal forecasts.
His appointment will need to be confirmed at a hearing of the Treasury select committee in the next few weeks.
The Treasury has also published details of a review of the OBR carried out in June 2015 by Sir Dave Ramsden, the department’s chief economic adviser.
This recommends that the OBR produce a new report on fiscal risks, in line with international best practice and meeting in full the IMF’s fiscal transparency code recommendations, as well as making a number of recommendations to strengthen existing governance processes.
However, the review has stopped short of agreeing that the OBR’s remit should be expanded, such as having a formal role in auditing or costing opposition policies, saying this would impose too much of a potential burden on resources and could risk the OBR’s independence.
In a statement, the Treasury said: ‘The government accepts all recommendations in full and agrees that the OBR should be adequately resourced to carry out its remit over the Parliament.
‘The detail of this will be agreed as part of the spending review process in coming months.’
Commenting on his re-appointment Chote, chairman of the OBR, said: ‘I hope that we have been able to shed light on the darker recesses of the public finances, helping Parliament and civil society to hold the government to account for its management of fiscal policy.
‘Looking forward, I am very pleased that the government has put forward an ambitious set of recommendations to strengthen our current operations and to widen and deepen our scrutiny of the public finances.
‘I hope very much that the government will provide us with the resources that we would need to deliver on them.’
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