The Queen's College Record 2023

energy and devotion to duty, but the fact that when there was a problem the
automatic reaction of our masters was to turn to Alan because he epitomised the
word integrity.
And amid all this activity, Alan was still involved in advising on the economy – giving
counsel by his understanding and declaring prophesies. Music and art, sport and
books, travel and working in his garden and allotment, all took up time and were
shared with friends and family.
Obituaries
After Alan had retired as Provost of Queen’s, the 2010 General Election ushered in a
new approach to fiscal policy with the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility,
or OBR as we now know it. The idea was that an independent group of economists,
rather than the official Treasury, would produce the economic forecasts that
accompanied the Budget. It was George Osborne’s creation to partner Gordon
Brown’s Monetary Policy Committee. But whereas the MPC was established inside
an existing institution with a well-respected Governor, Eddie George, at its head,
the OBR was a completely new body with no track record. Who could lead it and
establish its reputation? The Government turned to Alan to become the OBR’s first
Chairman. By leading the way, Alan inspired his successors to build up the OBR’s
reputation as an independent and honest body. Politicians ignore it at their peril, as
Liz Truss discovered last year.
The qualities that we all loved and admired in Alan – his intelligence, his compassion,
his wisdom, his total integrity, his sense of fun, his love of music and art, his deep
knowledge about almost everything and his talent for friendship – are the reasons we
have come here today to celebrate and give thanks for Alan’s life. As Ecclesiasticus
said about famous men:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore”.
All of us who were privileged to know Alan will remember him for ever. He made us
all better people.
Lord Mervyn King, Eulogy at the Memorial Service
for Sir Alan Budd at Queen’s College, Oxford 24 April 2023
Alan was appointed Provost in 1999. He came from that distant place that is known
in Oxford as “the outside world”, and some colleagues were doubtless wary of the
intruder. Alan of course was well aware of this, and I think rather enjoyed the status
of being an outsider—an educated vicar amongst the gentry, as he later put it in a
different context.
It is fitting, therefore, to remember that one of Alan’s greatest achievements at the
College was to open it up to that outside world, and to do so in a way that seemed
College Record 2023 | The Queen’s College 97