The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Richard Hughes, has said he felt “mortified” by the early release of its budget forecasts as the watchdog launched a rapid inquiry into how it had “inadvertently made it possible” for the documents to be seen. Mr Hughes has written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, to apologise.
Reuters, which first published excerpts of the outlook, said it obtained the document after visiting a publicly available URL that the OBR had used for previous budget documents, changing only the date. The file was uploaded to the OBR website and available on an unprotected link, with the agency saying a reporter went to the address shortly after 1130 GMT on Wednesday, about 45 minutes before the chancellor's budget speech.
The inquiry will receive expert input from Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, and will be overseen by the independent members of the OBR's oversight board, Sarah Hogg and Dame Susan Rice. The terms of reference describe a “publication error” and say the starting point is that the OBR inadvertently made it possible to access the November 2025 economic and fiscal outlook too early.
Ms Reeves gave Mr Hughes her backing despite calling the incident serious, while the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, said the OBR needed reform but was generally fit for purpose. Liam Byrne, chair of the business and trade select committee, said Mr Hughes should “consider his position”, describing the leak as “appalling”.
Mr Hughes said he regretted the disruption to the chancellor's statement and parliamentary proceedings. He said he expected the investigation to report by early next week and that he was prepared to step down if Ms Reeves and Ms Hillier lost confidence in him as a result of its findings.
The budget raised taxes by £26bn and included the scrapping of the two-child limit on benefits. The OBR's judgment that Ms Reeves risked breaking her fiscal rules had earlier prompted spending cuts, including a £5bn welfare reduction that was abandoned after a backbench rebellion.
