George Osborne election budget: OBR accuses Treasury of making scrutiny 'particularly difficult'

Treasury officials did not give the independent fiscal watchdog enough time to properly scrutinise the policies in Chancellor George Osborne's final budget before the 2015 general election, it has been claimed.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was created by Osborne in 2010. It is a body that assesses government tax and spending plans and publishes a report alongside budgets and autumn statements containing their analysis.

"The policy costings scrutiny process was particularly difficult for this budget as we were not given details of costings for a large proportion of significant policy measures until just before our deadlines," said the OBR of the 2015 budget.

OBR economists study the Treasury's costings of its policy proposals and choose whether or not to certify them "reasonable and central". All of the government's 2015 budget proposals were certified.

Osborne unveiled a number of so-called "giveaways" in his budget, which he said is fiscally neutral, including lifting the earnings threshold at which someone pays income tax to £11,000 in 2016/17 and subsidising the mortgage deposit savings of aspirant first time buyers.

The Treasury has been approached for comment by IBTimes UK.