{"id":299453,"date":"2025-12-04T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/299453\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T23:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T23:17:07","slug":"treasury-launches-inquiry-into-budget-leaks-with-full-support-of-rachel-reeves-budget-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/299453\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury launches inquiry into budget leaks with \u2018full support\u2019 of Rachel Reeves | Budget 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Treasury has launched an inquiry into autumn budget leaks after a chaotic buildup to Rachel Reeves\u2019s economic statement<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

The Treasury minister James Murray<\/a> said the department\u2019s permanent secretary, James Bowler, would review \u201csecurity processes\u201d to inform future events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government put the utmost weight on budget security, including the prevention of leaks of information,\u201d Murray said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA leak inquiry is now under way with the full support of the chancellor and the whole Treasury team.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes after important policies such as a freeze on income tax thresholds, a pay-per-mile levy on electric vehicles and a tourist tax were reported by the media before the budget on 26 November.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives<\/a> have claimed the leaks were unprecedented and part of an effort by Reeves to manipulate public opinion.<\/p>\n

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said at prime minister\u2019s questions yesterday: \u201cIf she was a CEO, she would have been fired and might even have been prosecuted for market abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speaker of the house, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, also criticised the leaks, calling it the \u201chokey cokey budget\u201d<\/a> and said policy should be announced first to the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

The chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, said: \u201cLeak inquiries have a habit of not finding someone responsible. But if somebody is found responsible, will they follow the lead set by Richard Hughes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray said he would \u201cnot speculate on the outcome of the leak inquiry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hughes quit as chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility<\/a> (OBR) on Monday after it mistakenly published a key document before the chancellor delivered her speech.<\/p>\n

Before the chancellor made her statement last week, the OBR had also raised complaints about budget leaks.<\/a><\/p>\n

Prof David Miles, of the OBR\u2019s budget responsibility committee, told MPs this week: \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.<\/p>\n

\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

Some business leaders have also complained that leaks around the budget affected economic confidence.<\/p>\n

Michael Summersgill, the chief executive of the investment broker AJ Bell, said on Thursday that rumours around the budget had prompted some customers to take money out of their retirement savings.<\/p>\n

\u201cUncertainty in the lead-up to the budget resulted in heightened pension withdrawals as customers approaching retirement responded to the extensive speculation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout a long-term commitment to not changing the tax-free cash entitlement or the deferral of income tax on pension contributions, rumours will inevitably surface ahead of every UK budget.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Treasury has launched an inquiry into autumn budget leaks after a chaotic buildup to Rachel Reeves\u2019s economic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-299453","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\/299453","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=299453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}