RSSeNEWS to be determined...

At the end of his three month tenure, Sir Alan Budd has insisted that the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) is "completely independent" of the Treasury and that it is not its job "to help the Prime Minister".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme Sir Alan acknowledged that "inevitably" mistakes had been made and that he had enormous regrets over damage to the OBR's reputation caused by providing employment figures that were used by David Cameron at Prime Minister's Question Time in July.

The incident occurred after the Guardian had published a leaked memo suggesting that the budget would cost 1.3m jobs. Budd said that "the correct numbers should be on public record"; the OBR brought forward publication of its own figures and it was "completely coincidental" that these were quoted by the PM.

Sir Alan said that the David Cameron used the figures "in a way that wasn't justified." Subsequently Budd was quizzed by the Treasury select committee over the OBR's independence.

He denied that having offices in a treasury building compromised the OBR's independence but said "it was extraordinarily convenient because we were inevitably having to use Treasury resources".

He defended the integrity of the officials who provided information to the OBR, describing them as "largely professional economists - they share our interest in getting these numbers right - they're not interested in distorting numbers - they're working honestly and fairly for us".

They were he said the same people who'd previously worked direct for the chancellor, but now "we have the same officials, but we don't have any ministerial interference and the OBR takes the full responsibility for the figures. We are producing a forecast; the chancellor has to adopt it, he can't adapt it".