Shortly before midday on Wednesday, a series of headlines about Rachel Reeves’s budget began appearing on the Reuters newswire, sending instant ripples though financial markets.
The details were jaw-dropping: they appeared to spell out the key policies of the chancellor’s budget more than 40 minutes before she was due to deliver them to a crowded Commons chamber.
“UK OBR ECONOMIC AND FISCAL OUTLOOK: BUDGET TAX RISES RAISE 26.1 BLN STG BY 2029-30,” read an alert published at 11.41am.
In the chaotic moments that followed across newsrooms and trading floors – as well as throughout Westminster – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) appeared unaware that it had published its highly sensitive analysis of Reeves’s tax and spending plans in full on its website.
As the Reuters snaps flowed, bond prices and sterling began moving as markets hastily executed billions of pounds of trades. The yield – in effect the interest rate – on 10-year UK government bonds initially dropped by four basis points, while the pound jumped by 0.3% on the news that the chancellor had built a significantly larger than anticipated fiscal buffer.
When asked about the leak, the OBR first suggested that any issue lay elsewhere. But within minutes, Downing Street realised the independent watchdog had uploaded its critical economic and fiscal outlook report – the key document that rules on the budget – well ahead of time.
In the moments before her speech, the chancellor was seen checking her phone as the news broke. Treasury minister Torsten Bell, sat behind Reeves, passed his phone down and MPs hurriedly shuffled handwritten notes along the frontbench.
By the time Reeves took to the dispatch box at 12.35pm, the OBR had been forced into issuing a humbling apology and had launched an internal investigation.
Details of the budget are supposed to be a closely held secret until the chancellor announces them to MPs in the Commons. However, high-profile breaches have happened several times before, in an increasingly leaky process.
Most recently, the London Evening Standard tweeted an image of its front page revealing the main announcements of George Osborne’s 2013 budget before the then chancellor was due to speak. In 1996, the then Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, returned a leaked copy of Ken Clarke’s budget speech.
Back in 1947, the Labour chancellor Hugh Dalton was forced to resign after giving a journalist details of his budget while on his way to the chamber. The news made the early evening papers before Dalton finished his speech.
Highlighting the gravity of the latest budget breach, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, suggested in the Commons that the leak could “constitute a criminal act”. He told MPs: “It is utterly outrageous that this has happened.”
Richard Hughes, the chair of the OBR, has said he will continue to lead the watchdog unless he loses the confidence of the chancellor, the Treasury committee or parliament. Reeves’s spokesperson said she has “full confidence” in Hughes.
“The document was unintentionally uploaded to our website too early,” Hughes told a tense press conference in Westminster. “We’ve initiated an investigation into how and why it happened. It was a mistake in the OBR.”
A Whitehall insider said the mistake was most probably down to human error. “Quite possibly by someone quite junior … no doubt in the middle of the worst day of their working life.”
Metadata shows the accidentally published PDF was last modified at 3.10am on Tuesday 25 November.
“I guess they created the page, got it ready, and then didn’t realise people would just guess the link,” an economist close to the OBR said. “They should have put it behind a password until the time.”
Another former official said Hughes falling on his sword would be inappropriate because the release was accidental.
“It is too soon to say heads must roll before you know what’s happened,” they said. “We need to see what the full details are, and the OBR have said they will do a forensic investigation of what went wrong.”
In the run-up to the budget, highly sensitive details are passed between the chancellor’s office and the OBR five times before budget day. One former insider said there were tight checks to stop leaks, including a requirement to use a “secure gateway” to access the documents when away from the office.
The leak will provide fresh ammunition for the watchdog’s critics, however. Within Labour ranks, the timing of its productivity downgrade – blowing a multibillion-pound hole in the chancellor’s tax and spending plans on budget day – has caused particular consternation.
“I hope this is the beginning of the end,” one government source said. “It’s time to shut it down,” said another.
Earlier this month, the TUC urged Reeves to launch a comprehensive review of the OBR, accusing it of being a “cheerleader for austerity” since its creation under Osborne in 2010.
Labour MP Jeevun Sandher, an aide at the Department for Business and Trade, said: “The OBR has got their key judgments wrong for 14 years, consistently underestimating the impact of public spending [cuts] on growth. Today they’ve released the forecast document early. Completely unacceptable.”
There was also significant enthusiasm across Whitehall for Reeves’s decision to stick to one fiscal event a year but two OBR forecasts – meaning she would not necessarily take corrective action next spring in response to the forecast.
“This was the original sin that led to the welfare debacle,” one adviser said. “It’s good we’ve realised we don’t actually have to kneecap ourselves twice a year.”
However, Labour critics and those close to the watchdog warned that the government had exposed itself to criticism long before the OBR leak, after months of kite-flying and speculation in the run-up to the budget.
“This disappointing trend in relation to budget briefings has been growing for a number of years and under successive governments, but appears to have reached an unprecedented high,” said Nusrat Ghani, the deputy speaker of the Commons, who presided over Reeves’s budget speech.
“This all falls short of the standards that the House expects.”
