LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves on Wednesday said the previous Conservative government hid vital information on public spending from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), citing a new report from the independent forecasting body.
Reeves quoted the OBR’s report as saying its forecasts in the March 2024 budget published by the previous government would have been “materially different” had it been given a fuller picture of the government’s spending.
“Let me be clear: that means any comparison between today’s forecast and the OBR’s March forecast is false,” Reeves said in her budget speech.
In its report, the OBR said then-finance minister Jeremy Hunt had not shared information about “large pressures” on day-to-day spending.
In a letter to parliament’s treasury committee, OBR Chair Richard Hughes said information about 9.5 billion pounds ($12.4 billion) of “net pressures” on departments’ budgets in 2024-25 had not been shared with the OBR.
Hunt has criticised Reeves’s decision to commission the review, saying it politicised the fiscal watchdog and would harm its impartial image.
The OBR made 10 recommendations for improving the transparency and credibility of the process for forecasting departmental spending plans.
Reeves said its recommendations would be implemented in full.
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(Reporting by Andy Bruce and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Kate Holton and Christina Fincher)
