Britain’s fiscal watchdog is to publish a detailed breakdown of the £22bn “black hole” that Labour says it inherited after Rachel Reeves presents the budget on Wednesday.
The Office for Budget Responsibility will release the conclusion of its review of how the forecast for departmental spending for its last economic and fiscal outlook, published for the March budget, was prepared.
The review has examined whether the information and assurances provided to the OBR by the Treasury regarding departmental expenditure limits ahead of the Conservatives’ final budget before the general election were adequate.
The review could help to clear up whether Labour was left, as Reeves claims, with a £22bn shortfall in funding to pay for public services this year.
Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor, has protested about the OBR’s plan to publish the review on Wednesday, calling it “a surprise and a significant concern”.
Hunt, who claimed in July that the £22bn “black hole” was nonsense, said he had not been contacted by the watchdog or the Treasury about the review, even though he was running the finance ministry until the election in early July.
“As this covers my time as chancellor, as a matter of procedural fairness I would have expected to have been fully engaged with throughout the review and given the chance to address any criticisms made,” Hunt told the OBR chief, Richard Hughes, in a letter on Friday.
Hunt argues that the OBR is breaching the principle of political impartiality by releasing its work on budget day.
“I had serious concerns about the way the report was announced on 29th July, done with no prior notice at the same time as a highly political statement from the chancellor of the exchequer in the House of Commons. The comments alongside that announcement gave the impression the OBR had prejudged the outcome,” Hunt said in his letter, published by the OBR on Sunday.
Hughes insisted the OBR’s findings and recommendations solely concerned the institutional relationship between it and the Treasury. “It does not disclose advice provided to ministers nor comment on, or refer to, the conduct or decisions of ministers,” Hughes told Hunt in a letter on Sunday.
The OBR is also declining to share the contents of its review with the opposition prior to publication, citing the “possible market sensitivity” of some of the information contained within it.
Reeves is expected to blame spending cuts and tax rises in the budget on the need to patch up the “black hole”, having already abolished the winter fuel allowance for wealthier pensioners to help plug the gap.
