Charter for Budget Responsibility

Torsten Bell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

I beg to move,

That the Charter for Budget Responsibility: Autumn 2025, which was laid before this House on 23 February, be approved.

The motion relates to the UK’s fiscal framework. It is a framework that matters: it guides fiscal policy and provides both transparency and accountability. Since coming into office, this Government have reformed the fiscal framework and, more broadly, set the public finances on a sustainable footing. At the autumn Budget, that included doubling the buffer against our fiscal rules, providing more certainty and stability for taxpayers and businesses. This is a core part of a wider economic strategy that includes Budget measures to reduce inflation, pushing down on the cost of living. All this helps to push down on interest rates and give businesses the confidence to invest. This is the right plan, and things are moving in the right direction. Just last week, we learned that January saw a £30.4 billion public finance surplus, the highest monthly surplus on record.

This is all supported by our reforms to the fiscal framework. We have reset the fiscal rules to reprioritise public investment and introduced a fiscal lock to ensure that Governments cannot sideline the Office for Budget Responsibility, as we sadly saw in the last Parliament. We are also committed to delivering one fiscal event a year, delivering on our manifesto and bringing the UK in line with the vast majority of advanced economies. At the Budget, the Chancellor announced plans to strengthen that commitment. We are doing so by drawing on recommendations from the International Monetary Fund’s article IV report last summer. The IMF made the case that fiscal policy stability would be aided by ensuring that the fiscal rules would only be assessed once a year. We agree, so this Government are legislating to ensure that this is the case.

To deliver this change, we are updating the two core parts of the fiscal framework. First, we are updating the primary legislation, the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, via the Finance (No. 2) Bill. Clause 251 of that Bill provides for one fiscal rules assessment per financial year. We are also updating the secondary legislation, the charter for Budget responsibility, which is the subject of today’s debate. The updated charter reinforces the change in the Finance (No. 2) Bill. It makes no changes to the fiscal rules, but ensures that those rules should only be assessed once per financial year. Specifically, it removes the requirement in chapter 4 of the charter for the OBR to conduct a fiscal rules assessment alongside any forecast. This will ensure that we can reduce the number of fiscal rules assessments per year without any reduction in fiscal transparency.

This Government are absolutely committed to the OBR’s independence, and to its vital role in providing regular assessments of the economy and the public finances. The OBR will continue to publish a second five-year forecast in the spring, which will aid transparency and inform the Debt Management Office’s financing remit, but the Government will not normally respond with fiscal policy. I look forward to seeing a few more Members of this House at the next of these forecasts, the spring forecast, a week today. I recommend that this House approves the updated charter, and I commend the motion to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the two Front-Bench spokespeople, one of whom spoke admirably briefly. I will not repeat the case for these changes, given that we have heard that both opposition parties are happy to support the Government’s changes to the charter, so I will just respond directly to the questions.

I say to the Lib Dems spokesperson that it is always good to hear anybody praising Sweden in any debate. On the questions about scrutiny, I do not think he gives enough credit to his hon. Friends on the Finance Bill, who have spent many hours scrutinising the policies, and I am sure they would be upset to hear his lack of faith in them today. Directly on his question about transparency, I think that is important, and that is why we are maintaining the two forecasts a year, despite there being only one fiscal event.

The Opposition spokesperson asked why we are making these changes now, and the answer is that in our manifesto we committed to one fiscal event a year. The IMF has come forward with sensible recommendations to reinforce that, and we are just responding to the IMF’s recommendations. He asked a question about the range contained in the previous charter, and that has been removed because it applied only at the spring forecast, and we are no longer carrying out a fiscal assessment at the spring forecasts. He asked about the IFS report suggesting a dashboard rather than fiscal rules. I can tell him that there will be no change to the fiscal rules, although I obviously always enjoy reading any think-tank’s reports, and I would point out that we have already doubled the headroom against the fiscal rules.

More importantly, I was sad to hear the Opposition spokesperson’s remarks more generally, because I always enjoy his normal perkiness, at least outside this Chamber, but he has turned into a gloomster.

[Richard Fuller]

No, never!

[Torsten Bell]

He is a total gloomster. He has totally ignored the record monthly surplus for the public finances. He has ignored the fact that wages are up, business investment is up and GDP has grown the fastest of any European G7 economy. He has ignored the fact that GDP per capita grew in 2025, after flatlining in the last year of the Tory Government and falling during the previous Parliament. He has ignored inflation falling and interest rates falling. I think it is right for the gloomster to be gloomy about his party’s prospects, but not to be gloomy about the UK economy. On that basis, I commend this motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.