Sir Robert Chote

Sir Robert Chote has been chair of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) since 2022 and of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council (NIFC) since 2021. UKSA is an independent public body charged with promoting and safeguarding the production and proper use of official statistics. Its remit covers the Office for National Statistics, the Office for Statistics Regulation and the Government Statistical Service. The NIFC is an independent public body created to bring greater transparency and external scrutiny to the public finances of Northern Ireland.

Previously, Robert chaired the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s fiscal watchdog, from 2010 to 2020 and the OECD’s network of parliamentary budget officials and independent fiscal institutions from 2017 to 2020. Before that he served as the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 2002 to 2010, as an advisor to senior management at the International Monetary Fund from 1999 to 2002, as the Economics Editor of the Financial Times from 1995 to 1999, and as an economics and business writer on the Independent and Independent on Sunday from 1990 to 1994 (where he was named Young Financial Journalist of the Year by the Wincott Foundation).

Robert is a director of Pacific Horizon Investment Trust plc, managed by Baillie Gifford in Edinburgh, and a senior adviser to the government reform consultants FMA. He also sits on the external advisory panel of the Parliamentary Budget Office in the Republic of Ireland. He is a visiting professor at the Department of Political Economy at Kings College London, a member of the Policy Committee of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and a governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

Robert studied economics at Queens’ College, Cambridge (where he is now an Honorary Fellow), journalism at City University of London and public policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He has honorary doctorates from the University of York and City University of London and was knighted in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List for services to fiscal policy and the economy. He is married to Sharon White – chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, deputy chairman of Sadlers Wells and a non-executive director of Barratt Developments.