\n<\/p>\n
The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility has resigned after a damning internal inquiry into the leak that threw Rachel Reeves\u2019s budget into chaos described it as the \u201cworst failure\u201d in the institution\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The departure of Richard Hughes, who said he took \u201cfull responsibility\u201d for the watchdog\u2019s failure to handle sensitive information, dragged the rolling recriminations over the budget into a fifth day.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer had notably failed to express confidence in the senior economist, while criticising the OBR for the \u201cserious error\u201d that he said was a breach of market-sensitive information and a \u201cmassive discourtesy\u201d to parliament.<\/p>\n
While ministers hope the resignation will draw a line under tensions with the OBR, the chancellor remains under pressure, with critics seeking to draw a contrast between Hughes\u2019s decision to quit and Reeves\u2019s defiance over her handling of the budget.<\/p>\n
Opposition leaders have accused the chancellor of misleading the public by claiming there was a hole in the public finances to justify tax rises, a charge that the government has denied.<\/p>\n
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said: \u201cSomeone has resigned as a result of the budget chaos \u2026 but it isn\u2019t Rachel Reeves. The chancellor is trying to use the chair of the OBR as her human shield. But I will not let her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pete Wishart, the SNP\u2019s deputy leader at Westminster, said: \u201cThe head of the OBR has taken responsibility, and resigned, to restore confidence after the budget leak. The head of the BBC took responsibility and resigned. Why is Rachel Reeves refusing to do the same?\u201d<\/p>\n
Government insiders, however, rejected the attempt to link the OBR leak with the chancellor\u2019s decisions over the budget. \u201cNow the Tories have suddenly decided they are the great defenders of the OBR? Laughable and totally unserious,\u201d one source said.<\/p>\n
In a major speech on Monday, setting out the government\u2019s economic plans in the run-up to the next election, the prime minister attempted to secure Reeves\u2019s position. Many in Westminster feel that Starmer\u2019s fate is inextricably linked with the chancellor\u2019s.<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the budget she had indicated that she was planning to increase income tax rates, pointing to gloomy productivity forecasts. When that plan was dropped, the Treasury briefed journalists that the decision was the result of a rosier outlook.<\/p>\n
But last week the OBR revealed it had already told the Treasury that its downgrade to productivity would be offset by higher incomes, which in turn boosted the government\u2019s tax receipts.<\/p>\n
In response, Starmer said the OBR\u2019s productivity downgrade had left the government with a \u201cstarting point\u201d of \u00a316bn less than it would otherwise have been, and that he had also wanted to maintain public spending, ease the cost of living and double the fiscal headroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was inevitable that we would always have to raise revenue, so there\u2019s no misleading there,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThere was a point at which we thought, myself included, that we might have to reach for a manifesto breach of some significance.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the process then continued, it became clear to me and others that we might be able to do what we needed to do with our priorities without that manifesto breach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer said he was proud to be tackling the cost of living through cuts to energy bills, freezing rail fares and boosting the minimum wage. He added that lifting the two-child benefit cap was \u201ca moment of personal pride for me\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the substance of the budget, I\u2019d defend it any day of the week. They\u2019re the right steps for our country and I\u2019m proud that we\u2019ve taken them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he acknowledged there were still significant challenges ahead. \u201cI will level with you, as the budget showed, the path to a Britain that is truly built for all requires many more decisions that are not cost-free, and they\u2019re not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Setting out his plans for the rest of this parliament, Starmer said he believed \u201cwe do need to get closer\u201d to the European Union. He also admitted the welfare system must be reformed, after attempts earlier this year failed.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n After the budget leak, the OBR had commissioned Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, to assist with a rapid investigation into what happened, overseen by independent members of its board.<\/p>\n The resulting report described the leak as \u201cthe worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR\u201d and strongly criticised its processes for protecting sensitive information.<\/p>\n It found the OBR had uploaded its budget documents to a link that it believed to be inaccessible to the public. However, because the organisation was using a particular add-on to the WordPress publishing system, the link ended up being live, unbeknownst to the OBR itself.<\/p>\n The forecaster confirmed the market-sensitive report was accessed 43 times from 32 different devices in the hour before the chancellor\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n More damagingly, the inquiry found this autumn was not the first time the OBR had inadvertently published budget documents early, with its reports being accessed early in March 2025, although no action resulted from the breach.<\/p>\n The Treasury has said it will contact former chancellors to make them aware of the developments that relate to previous fiscal events.<\/p>\n Hughes wrote to the chancellor and Meg Hillier, the Labour chair of the Treasury select committee, saying he took \u201cfull responsibility [for] the shortcomings identified in this report\u201d.<\/p>\n He wrote in the letter: \u201cThe OBR plays a vital role in the UK\u2019s fiscal policymaking, and it is critical that the government, parliament, and the public continue to have confidence in the work that it does.<\/p>\n \u201cThe inadvertent early dissemination of our economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) on 26 November was a technical but serious error.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI also need to play my part in enabling the organisation that I have loved leading for the past five years to quickly move on from this regrettable incident.\u201d<\/p>\n Hughes had been due to face questions from the Treasury select committee on Tuesday about the budget and the OBR\u2019s economic forecasts, but it was confirmed that he would no longer attend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility has resigned after a damning internal inquiry into the leak that threw Rachel Reeves\u2019s budget into chaos described it as the \u201cworst failure\u201d in the institution\u2019s history. The departure of Richard Hughes, who said he took \u201cfull responsibility\u201d for the watchdog\u2019s failure to handle sensitive information, dragged<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[113,2431,870,442,357,20091,1008,13449,284,5875],"class_list":{"0":"post-35746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-chair","10":"tag-document","11":"tag-early","12":"tag-inquiry","13":"tag-obr","14":"tag-office","15":"tag-quits","16":"tag-release","17":"tag-responsibility"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}