The public finances have turned out better than expected, despite weak economic growth, providing Philip Hammond with a boost. But he will want to go further in mending the public finances, David Smith writes.
There will come a time when the Office for Budget Responsibility’s gloom about the public finances is justified. Indeed at some stage we will almost certainly revert to the default position in which chancellor Philip Hammond or his successor is forced to come to the House of Commons and explain why borrowing is overshooting the official forecasts. But not now. Ahead of the chancellor’s spring statement in March the general expectation on the basis of the run of monthly figures was that the OBR would predict a public borrowing outturn of just above £40bn for 2017/18 the fiscal year then just coming to an end. Instead it surprised...
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The public finances have turned out better than expected, despite weak economic growth, providing Philip Hammond with a boost. But he will want to go further in mending the public finances, David Smith writes.
There will come a time when the Office for Budget Responsibility’s gloom about the public finances is justified. Indeed at some stage we will almost certainly revert to the default position in which chancellor Philip Hammond or his successor is forced to come to the House of Commons and explain why borrowing is overshooting the official forecasts. But not now. Ahead of the chancellor’s spring statement in March the general expectation on the basis of the run of monthly figures was that the OBR would predict a public borrowing outturn of just above £40bn for 2017/18 the fiscal year then just coming to an end. Instead it surprised...
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