The Treasury has tried to meddle with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s independent forecasts in an apparent breach of the rules that threatens to undermine the fiscal watchdog’s credibility, private documents seen by The Times show.
Tomorrow the Treasury select committee will challenge Robert Chote — who was nominated by George Osborne this month for a second term as chairman of the regulator — about civil servants interfering to cast government policies in a better light.
The chancellor established the OBR in 2010 to end political influence over economic and fiscal forecasting that came to be a hallmark of Gordon Brown’s tenure. Central to the OBR’s independence was the principle that the Treasury would intervene only on issues of factual accuracy.
However, emails obtained under