Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Richard Hughes, pointed fingers at Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, blaming them for the watchdog’s inaccurate predictions. The OBR managed to get its deficit forecast wrong by £30 billion last November, apparently the fault of the government. If you are making forecast errors of that magnitude on a three-month time horizon you are simply not responsible.
Now Hughes is preparing for his forecasts to be wrong again. He claimed forecasts might swing by as much as £30 billion again this time round, claiming this is courtesy of ministers’ knack for deviating from their own plans. Speaking to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee, he said:
“As we all know, there are patterns of behaviour in Government where they say they are going to do things and then everybody knows they are not going to do them. But we have to believe them when they say it…So that could drive up to £20-£30 billion error in our medium-term forecasts of public spending.”
He agreed with some economists that Hunt’s Autumn Statement which announced £20 billion of tax cuts while pencilling in equally large spending reductions was “implausible“. And Labour thinks the OBR should run the economy…
David Williams, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, was unusually honest during his Public Accounts Committee appearance on Monday. He went full-on Sir Humphrey when he came out with “There are only so many ways I can not answer the question”. This classic quote came just minutes after being asked about wasted taxpayers’ money, when he replied:
“We’re not at a stage where, I think, additional money will be squandered…”
Guido imagines at this point Jim Hacker would be calling for an economy drive…
Sir Tom Scholar is up in front of the Public Accounts Committee, and in his first answer confessed David Cameron personally lobbied him last April on behalf of Greensill. Asked if he gave Cameron more of a hearing as he’s a former PM Scholar said: “If a former minister that I’ve worked with asked to talk to me I will always do that… It’s natural when somebody that you know asks to speak to you, it’s quite natural to take that”. It’s been days without any developments…
