Speeches by Yang.

“Many of you have mentioned scenario planning and scenario-based forecasts or bespoke forecasts in your opening remarks. I want to single out a particular paper that was published by Dr Sousa at the University of Strathclyde. He has written about the fact that the long-term public finance forecasts that the OBR uses ass…”

“Professor Clift, even though we have three members on the committee, they do not make decisions collectively; different parts of the forecast are delegated. Is that the right interpretation?”

“Is there a way that other comparable agencies in other countries have dealt with the political issue of scenario selection that the OBR could learn from? It seems that the assumptions of taking Government policy as stated and so on do not produce accurate forecasts, as you pointed out, Mr Jessop, in the four to five-ye…”

“Thank you, Chair. The OBR was set up 15 years ago with the purpose of providing accurate, independent and politically unbiased forecasts. I will ask each member of the panel how well they feel the OBR has achieved this aim, and if there is anything they think could be done to improve the accuracy of the forecast. I wil…”

“Professor Clift, you have written a book about the OBR. In particular, you talk about the organisational structure of the OBR and the fact that many macroeconomic forecasting judgments are made by one person on the Budget Responsibility Committee. I can see that Ms Curtice agrees on this point. Would you speak to the p…”

“For those listening at home who have not yet read your book.”

“Sorry Professor Clift, could you just reverse a bit and set out the problem itself for those who have not yet read your book?”

“Is five your optimal number, Ms Curtice?”

“Mr Jessop is going with the second option.”

“T10. Reading is home to a large diaspora of Gurkha veterans; we are proud of their service and grateful for their sacrifices. Following the recent elections in Nepal, will the Minister work with the new Nepalese leadership to address collaboratively the issues these Gurkha veterans still face in the UK, and will she vi…”

“Last month, satellite imagery of the Gaza war cemetery showed that Israeli forces had destroyed more than 100 allied graves using heavy machinery. This is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission site, and these are graves of British and allied personnel who served in the first and second world wars and made the ultimate s…”

“The reason I ask is that the Home Office has set out its policy based on arguments about the fiscal impact of the net migration during the Boris Johnson era. I was wondering where that fiscal impact was being calculated, if not the Treasury. Do you have oversight of that?”

“Dr Sen, you last came to speak to the Committee at the start of the Ukraine war, when there was another global energy shock. Is the UK economy in a better position to weather those shocks than it was four years ago? If not, what more do we need to do to change that?”

“How does the number of events and forecasts that we have compare with other countries? Do we have more, fewer or about the right amount?”

“Do you agree with the Chancellor that there should be a higher bar for there to be more fiscal announcements in the spring—that is, that we should aim for one big set of announcements of policy changes per year, in terms of stability? Or does it not make much difference how many events there are?”

“There was a lot of discussion at the autumn Budget about there being too much media speculation and too many measures in the works. We have now had a lot of media criticism after the spring statement that there was not enough news in the statement—that not enough new policies were announced. What is the optimal pace fo…”

“Chancellor, at the last Budget you made a significant investment in special educational needs of £4 billion per year. You face many different competing pressures from various Departments. Could you outline why you chose SEND as a particular focus for investment and why that was a particular priority for you? Has the im…”

“How will the impact of that spending be spread among other departmental budgets? Will it be general or equally spread? How will it be distributed?”

“Thank you. We have seen those pressures from parents in our own constituencies as well—definitely.”

“Turning to the other side of spending—taxation—you have taken measures to narrow the gap between the ways in which wealth is taxed and work is taxed, such as at the last Budget. Looking over the remainder of this Parliament, do you think there is more to be done on narrowing that gap?”