{"id":295747,"date":"2025-12-02T23:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T23:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/295747\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T23:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T23:48:10","slug":"obr-complained-to-treasury-before-budget-about-leaks-spreading-misconceptions-office-for-budget-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/295747\/","title":{"rendered":"OBR complained to Treasury before budget about leaks spreading \u2018misconceptions\u2019 | Office for Budget Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Office for Budget Responsibility<\/a> complained to senior Treasury officials in the run-up to the budget about a flurry of leaks that it said spread \u201cmisconceptions\u201d about its forecasts, it has emerged.<\/p>\n

Prof David Miles of the OBR\u2019s budget responsibility committee told MPs on the Treasury select committee on Tuesday that the watchdog had raised the issue of leaks with the department before the chancellor\u2019s statement last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was clear that there was lots of information appearing in the press which perhaps wouldn\u2019t normally be out there and that this wasn\u2019t from our point of view particularly helpful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe made it clear that they were not helpful and that we weren\u2019t in a position of course to put them right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miles was appearing before the committee after the OBR chair, Richard Hughes, resigned on Monday<\/a>, taking responsibility for the inadvertent release of its budget documents about an hour before Rachel Reeves stood up to announce her tax and spending plans.<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s official spokesperson insisted on Tuesday that the watchdog\u2019s chair had not been pushed. \u201cIt\u2019s categorically untrue that Richard Hughes was forced to go,\u201d he said. \u201cThe chancellor has written to Richard and thanked him for leading the OBR and his many years dedicated to public service.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as the premature budget release, Hughes\u2019s departure also followed the publication on Friday of a letter<\/a> that took what he called the \u201cunusual step\u201d of spelling out the evolution of the OBR\u2019s forecasts over time, prompting a furious row about Reeves\u2019s account of the backdrop to her budget decisions.<\/p>\n

Miles said the letter was published because the watchdog felt the public had received a false impression, which was \u201cdamaging to the OBR and to the process\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prof David Miles on Tuesday before giving evidence to MPs. Photograph: Peter Nicholls\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

However, he denied that, as opposition politicians have claimed, the OBR\u2019s letter showed Reeves was misleading in her 4 November pre-budget speech<\/a>, in which she underlined the perilous state of the public finances.<\/p>\n

He said the OBR\u2019s forecasts \u201cdidn\u2019t suggest that the fiscal outlook was problem free\u201d and described the margin for error, or headroom, on the chancellor\u2019s fiscal rules<\/a>, which was \u00a34.2bn in the 31 October forecast, as a \u201csliver\u201d and \u201cwafer thin\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it was misleading for the chancellor to say that the fiscal position was very challenging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, Miles did highlight two \u201cmisconceptions\u201d \u2013 the idea that the OBR had shifted the time period over which it assesses the yields on government bonds, perhaps under pressure from government; or that its forecasts had swung dramatically at the last minute, affecting Labour\u2019s decision-making.<\/p>\n

He told MPs there was \u201ca view that the OBR\u2019s forecasts were wildly fluctuating in the process both leading up to the pre-measures forecast, and perhaps after it as well, and that that had made the budget process more chaotic than it otherwise would have been\u201d.<\/p>\n

His evidence also flatly contradicted a government briefing on 14 November, as markets reacted to news that Reeves had dropped plans to raise income tax, which suggested that decision resulted from improved forecasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere seemed to be a misconception that there seemed to have been some good news, and I\u2019m not sure where that came from: it didn\u2019t exist,\u201d he told the committee.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat had happened is that the forecast for headroom had gradually improved a little bit in the run-up to 31 October\u201d (when the final \u2018pre-measures\u2019 forecast was sent to Reeves).<\/p>\n

Questioned by the Conservative former Treasury minister John Glen, Miles said the watchdog wanted to make clear that it was not \u201ceither the patsy that was doing what the government wanted, or that through its own fickle behaviour changing from one day to the next [it] was making it virtually impossible for the government\u201d.<\/p>\n

As OBR officials were being questioned by MPs, the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, was defending the institution against attacks.<\/p>\n

He told a Bank press conference to launch its financial stability report<\/a>: \u201cThe reason the OBR was created was to ensure there was a source of independent forecasting and an independent assessment of fiscal policy \u2026 So attacks on the OBR in terms of the principle [of independence], I would say, \u2018No, can we please remember why it was done and the principles underlying it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughes\u2019s predecessor Robert Chote added his voice to concerns about the volume of leaks at a separate hearing, before the House of Lords economic affairs committee.<\/p>\n

Discussing how to restore confidence in the OBR\u2019s role, he said: \u201cYou want, bluntly, ministers and the wider political side and official side [of the Treasury] to spend the weeks running up to a budget concentrating on the substance of it and how you\u2019re going to explain it to people after the event, rather than trying to manage expectations as you go through, or to provide a running commentary on either the policy package or on the forecast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miles told the Treasury committee that the slew of leaks may have hit economic growth by exaggerating consumer and business uncertainty, which \u201cmay well have been exacerbated by leaks which some days seemed to be suggesting one thing and the next day something different\u201d. He added: \u201cI don\u2019t think that can have helped.\u201d<\/p>\n

He defended the OBR\u2019s decision to reassess its forecasts for the economy\u2019s underlying productivity<\/a> outlook this summer. Reeves and Keir Starmer have expressed frustration that this rethink, which led to a downgrade in growth forecasts, had not taken place earlier.<\/p>\n

Miles said it had been important to wait until the impact of the big economic shocks of Covid and Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine had faded, and it would have been \u201ctrigger-happy\u201d to move earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Office for Budget Responsibility complained to senior Treasury officials in the run-up to the budget about a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-295747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}