The 'Economic and Fiscal Outlook: November 2015 (Cm. 9153)' sets out forecasts up to 2020-21. It also assesses whether the Government is on course to meet the medium-term fiscal objectives that it has set itself, which were approved by Parliament in October 2015 update to the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility'. The 'Charter for Budget Responsibility' requires the OBR to judge whether the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of hitting its fiscal targets under existing policy. The current version of the Charter sets out the target for borrowing, debt and welfare spending that are assessed in this forecast: the fiscal mandate, which requires a surplus on public sector net borrowing by the end of 2019-20 and in each subsequent year; the supplement target, which requires public sector net debt to fall as a percentage of GDP in each year to 2019-20 and the welfare cap, a limit on a subset of welfare spending, at cash levels set out by the Treasury for each year to 2020-21 in the July 2015 budget. The OBR judged that the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of meeting the fiscal mandate and supplementary target. It expects the budget to be in surplus by 0.5 per cent of GDP (£10.1 billion) in 2019-20 and public sector net debt to fall by 0.6 per cent of GDP in 2015-16 and by bigger margins in subsequent years. Finally, the central forecast shows that the terms of the welfare cap are set to be breached in three successive years from 2016-17 to 2018-19, with the net effect of policy measures raising welfare cap spending in each of those years, and to well above the 2 per cent forecast margin in 2016-17 and 2017-18. The terms of the cap are set to be observed by very small margins in 2019-20 and 2020-21, with spending above the cap but within the forecast margin and with the net effect of measures in those years reducing spending.

The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance is about the politics of economic ideas and technocratic economic governance. It is also a book about the changing political economy of British capitalism's relationship to the European and wider global economies. It focuses on the creation in 2010 and subsequent operation of the independent body created to oversee fiscal rectitude in Britain, the Office for BudgetResponsibility (OBR). More broadly, it analyses the politics of economic management of the UK's uncertain trajectory, and of British capitalism's restructuring in the 2010s and 2020s in the face of the upheavals of the global financial crisis (GFC), Brexit and COVID. A focus on the intersection between experteconomic opinion of the OBR as UK's fiscal watchdog, and the political economy of British capitalism's evolution through and after Brexit, animates a framework for analysing the politics of technocratic economic governance. The technocratic vision of independent fiscal councils fails to grasp a core political economy insight: that economic knowledge and narratives are political and social constructs. The book unpacks the competing constructions of economic reason that underpin models of British capitalism, and through that inform expert economic assessment of the UK economy. It also underlines how contestable political economic assumptions undergird visions of Britain's international economic relations. These wereall brought to the fore in economic policy debates about Britain's place in the world, which in the 2010s centred on Brexit. This book analyses OBR forecasting and fiscal oversight in that broader political context, rather than as a narrowly technical pursuit.

The Government is seeking to reform the UK's fiscal framework in a number of ways. This Bill imposes a range of duties on the Treasury with regard to the formulation and implementation of fiscal policy, including through the Charter for Budget Responsibility. The Charter makes provision for the Government's fiscal and debt management objectives and its targets for fiscal policy that delivers these fiscal objectives. The Bill also makes provision for production of the annual Financial Statement and Budget Report, and removes the requirement for a pre-Budget report. The Bill establishes the Office for Budget Responsibility on a statutory basis, to examine and report on the sustainability of the public finances. Finally, the Bill modernises the governance arrangements of the National Audit Office. The office Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) will continue, but with tenure limited to ten years. The C&AG will be an officer of the House of Commons, and the National Audit Office will become a new corporate body with governance structures based on established good practice.

The 'Economic and Fiscal Outlook: November 2015 (Cm. 9153)' sets out forecasts up to 2020-21. It also assesses whether the Government is on course to meet the medium-term fiscal objectives that it has set itself, which were approved by Parliament in October 2015 update to the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility'. The 'Charter for Budget Responsibility' requires the OBR to judge whether the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of hitting its fiscal targets under existing policy. The current version of the Charter sets out the target for borrowing, debt and welfare spending that are assessed in this forecast: the fiscal mandate, which requires a surplus on public sector net borrowing by the end of 2019-20 and in each subsequent year; the supplement target, which requires public sector net debt to fall as a percentage of GDP in each year to 2019-20 and the welfare cap, a limit on a subset of welfare spending, at cash levels set out by the Treasury for each year to 2020-21 in the July 2015 budget. The OBR judged that the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of meeting the fiscal mandate and supplementary target. It expects the budget to be in surplus by 0.5 per cent of GDP (£10.1 billion) in 2019-20 and public sector net debt to fall by 0.6 per cent of GDP in 2015-16 and by bigger margins in subsequent years. Finally, the central forecast shows that the terms of the welfare cap are set to be breached in three successive years from 2016-17 to 2018-19, with the net effect of policy measures raising welfare cap spending in each of those years, and to well above the 2 per cent forecast margin in 2016-17 and 2017-18. The terms of the cap are set to be observed by very small margins in 2019-20 and 2020-21, with spending above the cap but within the forecast margin and with the net effect of measures in those years reducing spending.