The future of the OBR with Ed Conway
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Office for Budget Responsibility has attracted huge criticism, and anger from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, after mistakenly revealing the details of her budget hours before she delivered it. But the watchdog already had its critics.
Liz Truss says she never realised how powerful the OBR was and that it should be abolished. And Sir Keir Starmer has criticised the OBR's assessment of his government's fiscal plans.
So how will the budget leak affect the OBR's future? Niall talks to Ed Conway, Sky's economics and data editor about exactly what the OBR is, whether it has too much power and if it will survive.
Producer: Emma Rae Woodhouse
Editor: Wendy Parker
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up, after it accidentally leaked the entire contents of the budget, the Office for Budget |
| 0:06.4 | Responsibility might need at least to consider a name change. So, is it time to reform the OBR or |
| 0:13.0 | abolish it? Babe, it's Jim. Just voice-noting you because I'm so busy. I can't even type right now. |
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| 1:17.1 | It's hard enough being Chancellor on Budget Day. Harder still when the body designed to mark your homework, |
| 1:22.7 | leaks the whole thing before you've even got to your feet. But that's exactly what happened to |
| 1:27.4 | Rachel Reeves, thanks to a black hole-sized blunder |
| 1:30.4 | by the Office for Budget Responsibility. |
| 1:33.3 | In recent years, the OBR, which definitely doesn't stand for Office of Bleak Realism |
| 1:38.4 | or Office of Budget Ruination, well, it's found itself in an all-important role. |
| 1:42.6 | It takes the budget, looks at it, shakes it, sniffs it, |
| 1:46.4 | and works out if the numbers add up, literally. |
| 1:49.5 | But its calculations and predictions cast more than a shadow over the day. |
... |
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