US EditionHead of UK's OBR quits over early release of budget report
Richard Hughes resigned after the Office for Budget Responsibility's Economic and Fiscal Outlook was prematurely published, prompting a forensic review involving the National Cyber Security Centre.
- Richard Hughes resigned to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to `quickly move on` after the Economic and Fiscal Outlook was published online Last Wednesday before Chancellor Rachel Reeves's Budget speech.
- Treasury ministers say an OBR error may have caused early release of previous forecasts, and the March 2025 EFO appears to have been accessed prematurely, suggesting prior vulnerabilities.
- Technical review flagged missing protections such as passwords and randomised URLs, and the first IP address on Budget morning had made 32 prior attempts starting around 5am.
- The Treasury will contact previous chancellors and work with the National Cyber Security Centre to carry out an urgent forensic examination of other fiscal events, and ministers backed a `deeper forensic investigation` into prior OBR disclosures.
- The Treasury minister warned that market-sensitive forecasts may have been prematurely accessible to a small group of market participants, and ministers described the release as a `fundamental breach` while examining systemic risk.
35 Articles
35 Articles
Head of UK financial watchdog quits after early leak of Rachel Reeves’ budget
The head of Britain’s financial watchdog resigned on Monday after his agency last week inadvertently released the key details of finance minister Rachel Reeves’ annual tax-and-spending budget statement ahead of time. Richard Hughes said he wanted to help the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to recover quickly from the lapse which an investigation linked to IT weaknesses and leadership failures. “I have, therefore, decided it is in the best…
The OBR has lost the battle, but won the war
The budget drama has claimed a scalp: Richard Hughes has resigned as head of the OBR, following an inquiry into the leak of his organisation’s forecasts before Rachel Reeves’ budget. The report into the budget-day leak found it was “not a case of intentional leakage” but an “inadvertent” one as a result of IT weaknesses. It concluded the incident was the “worst failure” in the organisation’s 15-year history. Hughes wrote to Reeves this afternoon…
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