7OCT

Hillier's MPs seek 10-year OBR forecast

2 min read

12:52UTC

The Treasury Committee said on 23 September that the OBR's critics were shooting the messenger, and asked ministers to consider a ten-year forecast.

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EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

MPs backed the OBR and want ministers to consider a ten-year forecast.

The Commons Treasury Committee rejected calls to overhaul the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in a report published on 23 September, describing the forecaster's critics as "shooting the messenger"⁠¹. It recommends that ministers consider asking the OBR for a ten-year forecast alongside its five-year one. It also wants Parliament to set aside time to debate the OBR's annual fiscal risks report.

Committee chair Meg Hillier said the rules and the forecasts matter more "when government spending operates on razor-thin margins". OBR chair Jonathan Haskel welcomed the report⁠². The OBR's next forecast is due with the Budget, on the date it confirmed in July⁠³.

A ten-year horizon would show how pension and interest costs build beyond the five years on which each Budget is judged. The OBR already costs the state pension triple lock at £15.5bn a year by 2029-30, close to the far edge of the current window.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is an independent body that predicts what the government will earn and spend. The Chancellor uses its forecast to check whether the Budget obeys the government's own borrowing rules. Some people have attacked the OBR when its forecasts turn out bad. A group of MPs, the Treasury Committee, says that is wrong: critics are blaming the person who brings bad news. The MPs also suggest a forecast that looks ten years ahead as well as five. They want Parliament to debate the OBR's yearly risks report too.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The dispute exists because fiscal rules turn a forecast into a constraint. When headroom is thin, a revision of a few billion pounds decides whether a Chancellor needs to raise taxes, so attention shifts from the policy to the number.

The five-year horizon adds a second cause. Pension, health and interest costs build beyond five years, so a rule judged inside that window cannot show costs that arrive after it. The Committee's ten-year suggestion addresses that gap directly.

The OBR's remit sets a third constraint: it produces forecasts on current policy and cannot advise on what policy should be, so critics direct their anger at the forecast and not at the choices that produce it.

What could happen next?

Precedent
A committee recommendation to ask for a ten-year forecast gives ministers a documented reason to commission one, with the first chance at the 28 October Budget.
Meaning
Political backing for the OBR from the Commons committee raises the cost for any Chancellor of discounting its numbers.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Chancellor George Osborne created the OBR in 2010 after criticism that Treasury forecasts were too close to ministers' wishes. The shared mechanism is moving a forecast away from the department that must meet it, so that markets and voters can trust the figures.

Counter-parallel: The US Congressional Budget Office has published a ten-year baseline for decades and its projections regularly attract partisan attack, yet the baseline survives. A longer horizon has not removed the argument over who owns the forecast.

Immediate: the OBR forecast on 28 October will print headroom against the fiscal rules, with borrowing at £8.1bn over profile after five months and the 30-year gilt above 6%. The Committee's report changes no figure, so its effect runs through credibility, not arithmetic.

Structural: a ten-year forecast would add cost lines that sit outside a five-year window, such as debt interest on today's long-dated gilts, which carry coupons fixed until 2056 in the case of the 5⅜% issue the DMO sold on 8 September. Adding those lines would make future interest commitments visible on the forecast table.

Consensus view: The Treasury Committee, chaired by Meg Hillier, argues that the forecaster's record is sound and that the problem lies in thin fiscal margins, where any forecast revision looks like a policy failure. OBR chair Jonathan Haskel welcomed the report.

Counter-view: Critics of the OBR, whom the Committee describes as shooting the messenger, hold that a single official forecast gives Treasury policy too much weight to one set of assumptions, such as the 1.4% productivity path.

Key tension: Whether a ten-year horizon would improve the Budget by exposing slow-building costs, or hand the forecaster still more influence over what a Chancellor may do.

Sources:Office for Budget Responsibility·Finwire·Office for Budget Responsibility

Mentions:Treasury Committee →Office for Budget Responsibility →Meg Hillier →Jonathan Haskel →HM Treasury →Parliament →Autumn Budget 2026 →Congressional Budget Office →George Osborne →

First Reported In

Update #4 · £8.1bn over forecast, and the 30-year at 6%

Office for Budget Responsibility· 7 Oct 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

OBR fixes 28 October for next forecast

The OBR's 28 October date, confirmed in July, frames the Treasury Committee report.

Occurred 31 Jul 2026

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ONS puts borrowing £8.1bn over OBR path

The overshoot is what the OBR's 28 October forecast will price and the committee backed it to do.

Occurred 22 Sept 2026

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This Event

Hillier's MPs seek 10-year OBR forecast

A ten-year OBR horizon would expose pension and interest costs that fall outside the five-year window each Budget is judged on.

Different Perspectives

Conservative Party

Leader Kemi Badenoch said Labour will run out of money and proposed lifting defence to 3% of GDP, paid for from welfare. Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately put those savings at £23bn, "just the start".

Reform UK

Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick pledged £80bn a year of spending cuts by the end of the next parliament and claimed £30bn a year of interest savings. The Spectator judged that the sums still do not fully add up.

Centre for Policy Studies

The right-of-centre think tank argued on 4 October that Britain is not a low-tax country once workplace pensions and student-loan repayments are counted. Its comparison rests on 2019 data.

Institute of Economic Affairs

The free-market think tank argued on 28 September that alcohol, tobacco and landfill duties raised £5.2bn less than the OBR projected. That comparison is separate from the five-month borrowing overshoot.

Resolution Foundation

The centre-left think tank said on 8 September that about £1 in every £12 of public spending now goes on debt interest. In July it put headroom against the fiscal rules at about £10bn.

Audit Scotland

It reported on 17 September that three Scottish budgets planned ScotWind drawdowns and drew nothing each time. It warned that using one-off receipts to balance annual budgets can weaken spending control.