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Budget leak responsibility of OBR leadership, investigation finds
The Office for Budget Responsibility traced the leak to a web developer’s error and a guessable URL, causing early access to market-sensitive Budget details before the Chancellor’s speech.
- Last Wednesday the Office for Budget Responsibility published a 20-page report into the leak that saw most of Rachel Reeves' Budget accidentally published about an hour before her Commons address.
- After the files appeared in a supposedly private web area, a web developer uploaded them to the OBR website, but OBR staff struggled to remove the PDF amid intense online traffic.
- At 11:35 the documents were first accessed, the OBR was informed at 11:43 after a journalist said Reuters had broken the news two minutes earlier, and the Treasury told the OBR at 11:52 that third parties had guessed the URL.
- Four days ago Richard Hughes offered his resignation and his future is widely seen as hanging in the balance, while fresh fury erupted between the Treasury and the OBR after Commons Treasury Committee testimony.
- The OBR called the leak `the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR` and said the economic forecast for the Chancellor's March 2025 spring statement was also accessed prematurely but not made public, raising serious questions about misleading markets.
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Oxford University expert gives verdict on who to blame for Budget leak
The “ultimate responsibility” for the set of circumstances which led to the Budget leak lies with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a report by an Oxford University professor has found as he gives his verdict on the budget leak.
·Oxford, United Kingdom
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OBR must ‘change completely’ how it publishes sensitive reports after Budget leak
A review of the watchdog’s processes for publishing has been recommended. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said its leadership must take “immediate steps to change completely” how it publishes reports containing sensitive forecasts after it mistakenly released an analysis of the Budget early last week. The OBR launched an investigation with expert input from Professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC…
Coverage Details
Total News Sources14
Leaning Left4Leaning Right2Center6Last UpdatedBias Distribution50% Center
Bias Distribution
- 50% of the sources are Center
50% Center
L 33%
C 50%
R 17%
Factuality
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