Office for Budget Responsibility
 OBR     | |
|---|---|
| UK government economic forecasts office |
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is a non-departmental public body funded by the HM Treasury.
Contents
Official narrative
The UK government established it to provide independent economic forecasts and independent analysis of the public finances. It was formally created in May 2010 following the general election (although it had previously been constituted in shadow form by the Conservative Party opposition in December 2009) and was placed on a statutory footing by the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. The OBR is one of a growing number of official independent fiscal watchdogs around the world.[1]
Richard Hughes, former Director of Fiscal Policy at the treasury, became head of the OBR in October 2020.[2]
Climate findings based on retracted paper
In July 2024 the Office estimated that the country's Gross National Product (GNP) would be 7.8% less in 50 years’ time due to the effect of human-caused climate change. In 2025, it revised it upwards, saying that annual borrowing to fund the national debt would be over £50 billion higher at 2025 prices. The updated figures were linked directly to a paper from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, retracted by Nature. The paper was the second most featured climate work in corporate media in 2024, but was retracted "from a combination of data inaccuracies and methodology shortcomings that fundamentally undermined the core predictions of climate-driven economic damage".[3]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Britain didn’t vote Labour just to get a new iron chancellor | Article | 4 August 2024 | William Keegan | The economic damage wrought by Brexit continues. Our investment and growth prospects would benefit enormously if Starmer and Reeves abandoned this policy of “no return to the customs union, single market or freedom of movement”. I repeat what I have said before: the Labour manifesto commits it to removing unnecessary barriers to trade. But Brexit is the most formidable barrier of all! |
