{"id":431664,"date":"2026-02-18T04:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/431664\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T04:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:35:08","slug":"reform-plans-to-keep-uks-budget-watchdog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/431664\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform plans to keep UK’s budget watchdog"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The OBR is far from perfect,” Jenrick is expected to say, in a speech in the City of London.<\/p>\n

“But the impetus for its creation was a desire to instill fiscal discipline, and that is something we wholeheartedly endorse.”<\/p>\n

With Reform UK consistently leading in national opinion polls, the party’s economic plans are coming under greater scrutiny.<\/p>\n

In November, Farage rowed back<\/a> on Reform’s previous promise to deliver tax cuts worth \u00a390bn a year, as he sought to strengthen the party’s credibility on economic policy.<\/p>\n

Jenrick’s speech is the latest attempt to signal the party can be trusted to manage the public finances.<\/p>\n

The OBR assesses the health of the UK’s economy and the government’s spending plans.<\/p>\n

It is independent of the government and its reports are usually released alongside big financial events such as the budget in the autumn.<\/p>\n

However, some have questioned whether the body has too much power, given the level of influence its forecasts have over the government’s economic policy.<\/p>\n

Among the OBR’s critics is Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, who last month told Politico, external<\/a> the budget watchdog was “literally telling the government how to run its policy”.<\/p>\n

But in a change of tone, Jenrick is expected to say his party would be “happy to have our homework marked” by the OBR.<\/p>\n

“Rather than abolish it, we will reform it,” Jenrick is set to say.<\/p>\n

“We will break up this cosy consensus and ensure it has diversity of opinion.<\/p>\n

“And we’ll run competitions for superforecasters to join the body and pay competitive salaries to those who most accurately model the impact of Treasury decisions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The OBR is far from perfect,” Jenrick is expected to say, in a speech in the City of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-431664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}