Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the estimated economic impact of additional public investment within the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts reflects the composition of that investment spending in each year of the forecast period.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility produces comprehensive economic and fiscal forecasts twice a year. This includes a judgement on how public investment levels impact the economy.

This judgement is based on the Public Investment and Potential Output framework the OBR published in the summer of 2024, with the OBR providing further information on how it assessed the Autumn Budget 2024 increase in public investment in Chapter 3 of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

In both, the OBR outline how they use impacts of aggregate measures of investment, rather than the decomposition of investment spending. The OBR makes this assessment on the basis of the government’s headline capital spending plans.

The government has allocated capital budgets by department up to 2025-26. Allocations for future years will be published as part of the ongoing Spending Review, set to conclude in June 2025.