Speeches by Bell.

“I just do not agree with that characterisation, obviously.”

“You have just offered two characterisations of the process and I am rejecting those characterisations. That is the answer to your question. Nothing has gone wrong. We are following the normal process. Yes, we did not advertise the post until February. The Chancellor explained the reasons for that at a previous Committe…”

“We have a good field of candidates. We will nominate somebody and that will come forward to the Select Committee to carry out its important role.”

“I would just gently nudge that there have been some things happening in the world over the course of the last few months. The Government take this role very seriously. We will be nominating a candidate and we have been following the process in the normal way. It is in its final stages.”

“No, I am not. I am saying that we are following the normal process that we follow. The Chancellor has written to you and said that we intend to have a chair in place for the Budget, and that is what we intend to do.”

“No. I said we are in its final stages, so that includes being significantly past shortlisting. It is the Chancellor’s job to nominate a candidate. She will do that in the normal way, and then this Committee will carry out its important role.”

“There are a number of different things within what you have just said. You do not need my word for it on the spending side, because the OBR itself has carried out its DEL review in the fairly recent past because of the very significant problems in terms of the information that was provided to it for the spring 2024 for…”

“The Government never provide any assumptions for borrowing; the Government provide longer-term spending assumptions for DELs over time. Yes, if you look historically at some of the 2010 forecasts for DELs, those did include numbers that then turned out to be lower than the outturns when they came through. In some ways,…”

“Across a number of independent think-tanks, I read things that say that sometimes. They make a mistake of thinking that all that matters is rates of change; levels matter. What matters is levels of public spending in each Department. What is different now versus the early 2010s? A big £50 billion increase in current ex…”

“The OBR already does a large amount of that. Going back to my theme that is hopefully coming across in this evidence, I am a bit nervous about you asking the OBR to suddenly start trying to fix every problem that you see in the undergrowth. In the end, what matters is actual fiscal policy and fiscal outturns. When it c…”

“The most important thing, if I am honest, is that all forecasters showed far too much optimism bias all the way through the 2010s. That is the big thing that has happened. There was far too much optimism bias across the board as people reconciled themselves to a world with lower growth, with that lower growth surprisin…”

“If you look at last year’s outturns, the Bank of England was too pessimistic about the level of growth.”

“Yes, and the Bank of England was wrong. Growth came in stronger than that.”

“We should be discussing that. Your description of how the three-year rules are working and when the rolling will take place is absolutely right. For all of us, we should focus on all aspects of fiscal policy, not just on the fiscal rules. It might be a little bit unfair, but, if you look at the years before the 2024 el…”

“Let me answer your question, Dame Harriett. You received a letter from the Chief Secretary on Friday, and she is looking forward to coming to give evidence in lots of detail on defence spending once the DIP is published in the coming days. More generally, to your wider question, has Britain, like lots of other countrie…”

“I know. That is not quite what you said.”

“As someone who has spent 20 years in this space, I am always for more public debate on all aspects of economic policy, and that includes longer-term fiscal risks and pressures. I am a bit more optimistic than some of the evidence you have heard. If you look at the level of attention that was paid to last July’s fiscal …”

“They can anyway. I am quite a new Minister, but I have learned that that is definitely a question for the business managers rather than the junior Ministers in the Treasury. I am sure the inquiry will think about ways in which it wants to recommend extra attention to the longer-term reports. You want that debate to be …”

““Think-tank calls for longer reports” may be one of the less interesting recommendations made by think-tanks. I am all for longer reports. You should judge us on our actions as well as on our response—the response that we set out at the time of the Budget. We have set out that we will always respond within a year to th…”

“The nature of our model is that you have an Office for Budget Responsibility that will draw on expertise across Departments. That is unavoidable. The only way not to be in that situation is not to have it producing the fiscal forecast that underpins the Budget, given the sheer range of inputs to an official forecast.”