UK finance minister Rishi Sunak on Friday announced that Richard Hughes, a former senior official at the British Treasury and the International Monetary Fund, will be his chosen candidate for the Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
"At an unprecedented time when the state has had to take unprecedented action, it is essential that our institutions work as they should to ensure that we retain our complete commitment to strong public finances and responsible management of tax-payers’ money", Sunak said.
"I would like to thank Robert Chote for the excellent work he and his team have done over the past ten years", he added.
In turn, Richard Hughes said that he was honoured to be nominated to be the next Chair of the OBR.
"I would like to thank the current Chair Robert Chote, Charlie Bean, Andy King, and the staff of the OBR for all the work they have done over the last decade to establish it as one of the preeminent independent fiscal agencies in the world. Like them, I am committed to upholding the OBR’s well-deserved reputation for objective, transparent, and rigorous analysis of economic and fiscal developments", Richard Hughes said.
Hughes currently works as a researcher at the think tank Resolution Foundation.