22OCT

Hillier's MPs seek 10-year OBR forecast

2 min read

16:23UTC

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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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

Pension Protection Fund

Acting chief actuary Aaron Pang put the rise to 135.0% funded down to liabilities falling 2.1% against a 1.0% fall in assets, reflecting higher gilt yields. On Lowdown's reading, the yields that lift the Treasury's interest bill leave 4,838 company schemes with a £280.7bn surplus that does not reduce state borrowing.

Torsten Bell

The Labour figure wrote on 14 October that the IMF's October figures show the fastest fiscal consolidation in the G7. The IMF forecasts the UK deficit falling from 3.8% of GDP in 2026 to 1.4% in 2031, a squeeze still to be delivered through taxes and spending.

Tax Justice UK

The left-leaning campaign group says ten tax reforms would raise over £60bn a year for public services, and on 22 October asked why higher taxes on extreme wealth remain politically difficult. It offers the tax-led exit to the IEA's cuts; the £60bn is its own claim, not an official costing.

Institute of Economic Affairs

The free-market think tank's Alternative Budget of 19 October would suspend the state pension triple lock for three years, freeze welfare in cash terms and move tax onto a wider VAT. It claims the day-to-day budget returns to surplus in 2027-28, its own projection rather than an official costing.

Resolution Foundation

The living-standards think tank said welfare spending ran about £2.5bn above expectations in September, City AM reported on 21 October, and its economist Greg Thwaites urged targeted energy support. Its figure lands as a Chancellor who calls welfare cuts a moral duty finalises the 28 October Budget.

Institute for Fiscal Studies

Director Helen Miller said a steady-as-she-goes Budget is not an option, with the IFS putting 2029-30 headroom at about £20bn, The Independent reported on 12 October. The IFS puts the cost of avoiding cuts and funding higher defence at around £35bn of tax rises or benefit cuts, more than any headroom estimate in circulation.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.