Bookending the budget : a proposal for reforming the UK fiscal policy process

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Sousa, João P. (2026) Bookending the budget : a proposal for reforming the UK fiscal policy process. National Institute Economic Review. ISSN 0027-9501 (In Press) (https://doi.org/10.1017/nie.2026.10099)

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Abstract

The 2025 Budget exemplified the dysfunction in the UK’s Budget process, which has seen systematic and selective briefing of underlying forecast details — meant to be private between the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury — to the media since the 2022 ‘mini-budget’ crisis. In all documented occasions, this has come from the Treasury, with the OBR remaining silent throughout, and allows the Treasury to bed in a narrative based on partial information, with real costs in terms of prolonged uncertainty and market volatility. This paper proposes a relatively narrow reform to the process that would see the OBR ‘bookend’ the Budget. The OBR would publish its pre-measures forecast three weeks before a fiscal statement — the same timing as it currently delivers it internally to the Treasury. The Treasury would then respond separately with its policy measures on Budget Day, with an OBR assessment following some days or a couple of weeks later. Key benefits of this reform are: increased transparency and enhanced democratic accountability; removing the OBR from politically contentious judgements about second-round effects of policies before they are even announced and under pressure from the Treasury to hit particular fiscal rule targets; reducing the window for market uncertainty by providing a full published baseline; and restricting speculation after the OBR publication to policy decisions. This would be achieved while minimising the impact on the established forecast timetable. This design, adopting established practice from the Netherlands in publishing the pre-measures forecast to the UK’s institutional setup, is worthy of serious consideration to guard the OBR’s independence while reducing the window for market volatility.

ORCID iDs

Sousa, João P. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9842-3870;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)