Graham Parker: Response to Treasury Committee
Questionnaire
A. PERSONAL AND
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
1. Do you have any business or financial
connections or other commitments which might give rise to a conflict
of interest in carrying out your duties as a Member of the BRC?
No.
2. Have you ever held any post or undertaken
any activity that might cast doubt on your political impartiality?
I was involved in some political activity at
university in the 1960s but nothing since.
3. Do you intend to serve out the full term
for which you have been appointed?
Yes.
4. Please explain how your experience to
date has equipped you to fulfil your responsibilities as a member
of the BRC
The OBR needs to work very closely with technical
experts from HMRC/DWP and elsewhere in producing the tax and public
expenditure forecasts, and in scrutinising the costings of tax
and spending policy measures. At least one BRC member has to have
the technical capacity to challenge the detailed forecasts and
costings, and my experience in Inland Revenue and HM Treasury
means I have the necessary knowledge and skills to do this.
I spent 13 years in Inland Revenue working in
a variety of areas:
— initially providing advice on all analytical
issues on North Sea Oil taxation, including forecasting all revenues;
— forecasting PAYE and other income tax
components;
— co-ordinating all forecasts of direct
taxes and Inland Revenue input to scorecard showing costings of
Budget measures; and
— leading the team responsible for all
analytical advice on income tax, including forecasting and advice
on policy costings. During my tenure I expanded the role to cover
national insurance contributions and personal tax credits.
I followed this with nine years as head of Public
Sector Finance (PSF) team in Treasury. This filled in the gaps
in my public finance knowledge so that I now have a thorough understanding
of forecasting issues affecting all taxes and all public expenditure.
Especially during the early years in PSF I had to get very involved
in the detail of the forecasting operation and in improving the
systems used to assemble and present the fiscal aggregates. This
gave me a detailed understanding of the complex architecture of
the public finances and of the key factors affecting the main
aggregates.
Although my knowledge and expertise in respect
of the macroeconomic forecast is less pronounced, I regularly
took part in discussions on the macro forecast during my time
in HMT and have a good understanding of the process, especially
in respect of the relationships between individual macroeconomic
variables and the public finance forecasts.
My analytical ability has been one of my biggest
strengths throughout my career. The most recent relevant example
of this concerns the process the interim OBR had to use to certify
the costings of the June Budget policy measures. The volume of
measures and the lack of time available meant we were presented
with several complex analytical papers each day. I led for OBR
in almost all of the scrutiny meetings and my specialist knowledge
and analytical ability allowed me to quickly deduce which were
the critical assumptions and methodological issues, probe for
more detail, suggest alternatives and ask for further work where
necessary.
I needed to demonstrate independence of thought
and integrity in many different ways over my career. In Treasury
I was responsible for the department's contribution to the published
public finance statistics. This required me to act with complete
integrity and maintain the confidence and trust of colleagues
in Treasury, ONS and elsewhere. During my last few years in Treasury
I was head of statistics profession. I had to act independently
of the departmental hierarchy in ensuring full compliance with
National Statistics rules across the department.
I have considerable experience of communicating
public finance forecast results to Ministers and senior officials
in a persuasive and convincing manner, and have stood up well
to challenging questioning. I also had some opportunities to communicate
with external audiences.
In terms of my leadership and interpersonal
skills, I have a proven track record as a good manager and motivator
of analysts. I have also used these skills to good effect in my
role in the interim BRC. This involved a lot of "challenge"
in my discussions with departmental analysts, but I ensured that
the challenges I made to forecast assumptions and judgements were
reasonable and backed up by the necessary objective argument.
5. Which of your publications or papers are
of most relevance to your future work on the BRC?
I was responsible for producing the public finance
chapter in every Budget and PBR document between Budget 2000 and
Budget 2008.
B. ACCOUNTABILITY
6. If you were to make yourself available
for reappointment as a member of the BRC at the end of your term,
what criteria should be used to assess your individual record?
I would primarily expect to be judged in terms
of my contribution towards establishing the OBR as the authoritative
and well-respected primary source of analysis on the sustainability
of the public finances. I would expect there to be specific criteria
arising out of the priorities set out in response to question
8 below, especially in respect of developing fiscal forecasting
and in improving general understanding of fiscal forecasting.
C. OTHER PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
7. What other professional activities do
you expect to continue/ undertake in addition to your position
on the BRC and how do you intend reconciling these activities
with your position as a member of the BRC?
None, other than possibly undertaking technical
assistance roles for IMF. I am on their panel of fiscal experts
but in the event of their asking me to go on a technical assistance
visit I would only accept if it did not clash with an OBR forecasting
exercise or any other BRC commitments.
D. PERFORMANCE
OF THE
ROLE
8. What will be your priorities as a member
of the BRC?
To play a full part in establishing, and maintaining,
the OBR as a fully independent and well respected organisation,
with an excellent reputation as the source of all analytical information
on fiscal sustainability.
Although I would expect to contribute across
the whole spectrum of BRC activity I expect that my main priorities
will be in the fiscal forecasting area. I expect to continue my
role as the main BRC "challenger" on fiscal forecasts
and policy costings.
In the short term I will be using my experience
from the interim BRC and before to help my new colleagues on the
BRC to understand the fiscal forecasting process.
I attach considerable importance to transparency.
We have already achieved a lot in this respect but there is more
we can do, and we already have plans to publish more detail on
fiscal forecasts in the next forecast, and improve the main presentation
of receipts.
We need to look in more detail at fiscal forecasting
performance and on potential improvements to fiscal forecasting
methods, and improve public understanding of the methods and issues.
In conjunction with other interested bodies
we need to develop our analysis of longer term sustainability
issues. The most important element of this over the coming year
will be developing the OBR's replacement for the Treasury's Long
Term Public Finance Report.
9. How do you think the BRC should operate?
By one member, one vote on issues where consensus may not be achieved,
or with the Chairman charged by the legislation to take responsibility
for decisions?
The BRC as a whole should be charged with the
responsibility for performing the duties of the Office. In the
interim BRC we managed to achieve a consensus on all major issues
and I expect that the BRC to continue to operate in a similar
fashion, without the need for a formal voting process. It is important
to realise that there are far too many individual judgements and
decisions required during the forecasting process for all BRC
members to be involved in every one of these. The BRC collectively
made the decisions on major issues but agreed to devolve some
decision making to individual BRC members. For example I was solely
responsible for many decisions on various components of the public
finances forecasts.
10. What have you learnt from your experience
in the interim OBR?
— that the OBR is a very worthwhile and
important enterprise and that I had a lot to contribute to its
successful establishment;
— that, provided the BRC and OBR staff
have the necessary technical knowledge and independence of view
to challenge every aspect of the forecast, the HMT/HMRC/DWP fiscal
forecasting system can be successfully adapted to work within
the environment of a fully independent OBR, and that this approach
is the right one for the OBR;
— that perceptions are sometimes just as
important as reality. We needed to work closely and effectively
with officials across a number of departments, and the co-operation
we received was excellent. We were very impressed by the professionalism
of officials and by the way they responded to the new regime.
It was clear to everyone concerned with the process that although
officials were actually producing components of the forecasts
and providing valuable advice on particular judgements, all the
decisions on assumptions and other inputs were solely the OBR's,
but it proved rather more difficult to convince some commentators;
and
— that transparency is a very good thing
but does bring its own set of problems. We initially had a policy
of responding to all reasonable requests for additional information
as soon as practicable, but events soon proved that this was not
workable. The permanent OBR will need a properly thought-out policy
on release practices.
October 2010
GRAHAM PARKER: CURRICULUM
VITAE
CAREER DETAILS
May 2010 to present: Office for Budget Responsibility
(OBR)
Appointed as interim Member of Budget Responsibility
Committee (BRC) on the recommendation of Sir Alan Budd, initially
on a three month contract to cover the pre-Budget and June 2010
economy and fiscal forecasts and other duties covered by the terms
of reference of the interim OBR. Contract has now been extended
pending the appointment of permanent members of the Budget Responsibility
Committee.
November 1999 to January 2009: HM Treasury, Head
of Public Sector Finances
Led Public Sector Finances team which comprised
15 people (almost all professional economists and statisticians)
Team's role was to measure, monitor, explain and forecast the
tax revenues, public expenditure and all the fiscal aggregates.
January 1997 to November 1999: Inland Revenue,
Assistant Director
Assistant Director in Analytical Services Division
(ASD) heading group of 14 people covering income tax, and latterly
national insurance contributions and tax credits. Responsibilities
included providing advice on costs/yields and distributional effects
of potential changes to income tax/tax credit/National Insurance
Contribution regimes and providing forecasts to HM Treasury.
September 1992 to January 1997: Inland Revenue,
Assistant Director
Assistant Director (Personal Incomes) in what
was then Statistics and Economic Division (SED) covering part
of income tax work (income tax work was split between two ADs
before January 1997 reorganisation), providing forecasts, costings
and related advice on parts of income tax (mainly self employed
and bank and building society interest), with particular focus
over this period on the introduction of Self Assessment.
June 1990 to September 1992: Inland Revenue
Head of Budget support and forecasting co-ordination
branch, Statistics and Economic Division, with responsibility
for forecast and Budget co-ordination, providing overall briefing
and monthly reports to Ministers and senior management on forecasts
covering all IR duties, monitoring forecasting performance, and
assembling Budget publication tables and related material on all
IR Budget measures.
August 1986 to June 1990: Inland Revenue
Head of North Sea oil branch, Statistics and
Economic Division. Main responsibilities covered revenue forecasts,
policy costings and analytical advice on oil taxation.
June 1981 to August 1986: Ministry of Defence
Defence aspects of economic statistics (price
indices, employment effects of defence expenditure, balance of
payments etc).
July 1974 to June 1981: Civil Service Department
September 1973 to July 1974: Cabinet Office/University
College
1974: Diploma in Statistics (Distinction)
September 1972 to September 1973: University of
Zurich: Post-doctoral research fellow
1966 to 1972: University of Bristol: Ph D Chemistry
(1972), BSc Chemistry (1st class) (1969)
1959 to 1966: Colchester Royal Grammar School
OTHER POSITION
2008 to present:
Member of IMF Fiscal Affairs Department's panel
of technical experts
DATE OF
BIRTH
28 July 1948
| 
