UK budget watchdog in danger of strangling economic growth, says TUC boss

Paul Nowak: ‘I don’t think the chancellor, whatever happens at the budget, wants to go down the road of austerity 2.0.’ Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Britain’s budget watchdog is in danger of strangling growth and should be modernised to ditch its “hardwired” support for austerity economics, the Trades Union Congress has warned.

Less than two weeks before Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget, the trade union umbrella group said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was at risk of being a “straitjacket” on growth in living standards.