Finance Act 1998

156 Annual Budget documents

(1) It shall be the duty of the Treasury, for each financial year, to prepare and lay before Parliament the following documents, that is to say—

(a) a Financial Statement and Budget Report;

(b) an Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report; and

(c) a Debt Management Report.

(2) The preparation and laying before Parliament of the Financial Statement and Budget Report for any financial year shall be preceded, in such cases and by such period as may be set out in the code for fiscal stability, by the preparation by the Treasury of a document to be known as the Pre-Budget Report.

(3) The Treasury shall lay before Parliament any Pre-Budget Report prepared by them under subsection (2) above.

(4) The contents of the documents which the Treasury are required to prepare and lay before Parliament under this section, and the occasions on which those documents are to be so laid, must conform to any provision about those matters made by the code for fiscal stability.

(5) It shall be the duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine and report to the House of Commons on such of the conventions and assumptions underlying the preparation by the Treasury of the documents prepared by them under this section as, in accordance with the code for fiscal stability, are submitted to him by the Treasury for his examination.

(6) A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General under subsection (5) above must be made at the same time as, or as soon as reasonably practicable after, the laying before Parliament of the documents to which it is referable.

(7) It shall be the duty of the Treasury to secure the publication in the manner required by the code for fiscal stability of any document which they have laid before Parliament under this section.

(8) In this section “the code for fiscal stability” means the code for the time being in force under section 155 above.

(9) The first financial year for which the documents mentioned in subsection (1) above are required to be prepared and laid before Parliament is the year beginning with 1st April 1999.