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Obr Report To Be Published Tomorrow, Exonerating The Tories Over The Mythical £22 Billion Black Hole
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Labour’s false claim over the Tory’s financial incompetence will be exposed tomorrow with the release of the OBR’s independent report into the fiasco – as my mate Phil explains.
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The report will allow Labour to cherry pick key points for them and balme the Tories. The Tories may have counter arguments (eg Labour gave bigger pay rises and didn't require any efficiency improvements to offset the cost) but Labour will be delighted. I fear Labour has pressurised the OBR to do it today for maximum effect and not give chance for people to see past the headlines. There are ways of leaning on bodies like the OBR- eg this is what we want you to say, and if you want continued funding you'll need to say it, otherwise we will make life uncomfortable and set another body up with a similar function
Has the OBR report appeared yet? I notice that the Chancellor in her Budget Speech said the OBR had stated the amount hidden was 'material' rather than £22 billion. Nevertheless its embarrassing for the Tories that they didn't include PO Horizon and infected blood compensation in their last forecast.
"A hole of 21.9 billion."
That's not quite how I read it:
"The Treasury did not share information with the OBR about the large pressures on RDEL (Resource Departmental Expenditure Limits), about the unusual extent of commitments against the reserve, or about any plans to manage these pressures down at the challenge panel. Further information that came to light after this meeting, but before the forecast was published, about pressures on baseline RDEL budgets and the implications of policy decisions announced at the Budget, was also not sufficiently shared.
The view of the OBR is that, had this information been made available, a materially different judgement about RDEL spending in 2024-25 would have been reached. The underspend assumption of £2.9 billion would very likely have been dropped, and so there would have been a materially higher DEL forecast for 2024-25.
However, it is not possible to judge now exactly how much higher. If the OBR had been presented with the full extent of pressures during the preparations of the March forecast, further questions would have been asked to enable an assessment of the Treasury’s plans to manage down pressures and find offsetting savings to stay within the DEL budgets for 2024- 25. That assessment did not take place and so it is not possible to judge how it would have concluded. But the possibility of reductions being found is signalled by the current Government having subsequently in its July statement set out plans to ask departments to absorb £3.2 billion of pay pressure and by raising its fallaway assessment." [my emphasis]
No mention of £21.9bn.
More than that, although I've only skimmed the report, its conclusions seem to identify more a failure of process rather than any deliberate attempt by the Treasury to deceive the OBR.
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