It didn’t take long for the Commons to spot the glaring omission in Rachel Reeves’s boast that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) has increased its growth forecast for next year and beyond. The OBR’s growth forecast for this year has just been halved relative to its estimate made last October, down from 2 per cent to 1 per cent.
Take into account the growing population and the OBR expects GDP per capita to rise this year by just 0.3 per cent. While the Chancellor wants us to concentrate on later growth forecasts, these do not negate the deterioration in our short-term prospects. Overall, the OBR judges the cumulative growth in potential output between 2023 and 2029 to be 0.5 per cent lower than it thought last October.
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