Mr. Robert Chote:

Only implicitly, because the Treasury will have given us a departmental expenditure limit, DEL, which is aggregated over all Departments. There is one DEL for capital spending and another for current spending. It will tell us its aggregate capital and resource DELs, which are then used in the forecast. The only adjustment we make is an aggregate over- or underspend against that DEL, which we would base on recent history, intelligence from the Treasury, intelligence from Departments and knowledge. For example, we might know that there has been unexpected military action and that therefore some of the contingency reserve has been already spent, and that information would be taken into account. What we do not do is produce a bottom-up forecast that shows that total spending equals aircraft carriers plus high-speed train plus nurses plus so on and so on. It could be done that way, but that is a reflection of the fact that the Treasury carries a big stick. There are strong incentives for the Treasury and Departments in aggregate not to overspend, and they do not.