The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility has said he felt “personally mortified” by the early release of its budget documents and said the former boss of the National Cyber Security Centre will be involved in an investigation into the incident.
Richard Hughes said he had written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, to apologise, and launched the inquiry.
“I felt personally mortified by what happened. The OBR prides itself on our professionalism. We let people down yesterday and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, would provide expert input to the investigation, Hughes said.
He said the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – its key budget document – had been accessible from outside the organisation.
“The documents weren’t published on our webpage itself. It appears there was a link that someone was able to access – an external person. We need to get to the bottom of what exactly happened,” he said.
Speaking on Thursday morning, the chancellor gave Hughes her backing despite the breach. The incident was serious, she said, “but I do have confidence in Richard and the OBR”.
The early publication of the document, about 45 minutes before the chancellor was due to deliver her budget in the House of Commons, meant details of her key policies were made public before she announced them.
“I regret the disruption that it caused to the chancellor’s statement and parliamentary proceedings,” Hughes said.
The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, said the watchdog was in need of reform. Asked on LBC whether he thought the independent watchdog was “fit for purpose”, Sir Mel Stride said: “I think, generally, yes it is. I do think it needs reform.
“Clearly, this latest incident is both unprecedented and deeply worrying that they should have, for whatever reason, leaked or posted up the entire contents of their report before the chancellor had actually stood up in the House of Commons.”
Reeves’s budget on Wednesday raised taxes by £26bn in response to weaker OBR forecasts, and to pay for higher spending including on scrapping the two-child limit on benefits.
The relationship between the Treasury and the OBR has at times been fraught in recent months, with Reeves publicly questioning the timing of the review of its productivity forecasts.
She announced in the budget that the OBR would now assess whether or not her fiscal rules were met once a year, at the annual budget, not alongside the spring statement as usual.
It was the OBR’s judgment that Reeves risked breaking her rules that prompted the chancellor to seek savings at this year’s spring statement, including £5bn of welfare cuts that had to be abandoned after a backbench rebellion.
