Senior MPs urged to set up US-style crisis alert group

Senior backbench MPs are being lobbied to set up a powerful US-style committee that would scrutinise the public finances as a whole and try to head off major fiscal disasters.

Chairmen of the existing Select Committees are being urged to back the creation of the new parliamentary body that would scrutinise the public finances ‘in real time', the Daily Mail reports. This ‘Parliamentary Budget Committee' is proposed in a report commissioned by the Chancellor. It would give MPs the ability to spot crises ahead of time rather than investigate them only after things have gone badly wrong as the Public Accounts Committee does. It would be supported by a ‘Parliamentary Budget officer', a senior independent expert charged with advising committee members and helping...