Ex-cybersecurity chief called in to probe budget leak

The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility has said he felt mortified by the early release of its budget forecasts as the watchdog launched a rapid inquiry into how it had “inadvertently made it possible” to see the documents.

Richard Hughes said he had written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, to apologise.

“I felt personally mortified by what happened. The OBR prides itself on our professionalism. We let people down yesterday and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Reuters, the agency that first published excerpts of the outlook on its news wire, revealed on Thursday how it had obtained the document.

It said: “The document, which is usually published after the finance minister’s speech has ended, was uploaded to the OBR website and available to download on an unprotected link. The link was not advertised on the website but the OBR has used the same web address, or URL, for previous budget documents, changing only the date. A Reuters reporter, in preparation for covering the budget, went to the publicly available URL shortly after 1130 GMT on Wednesday.”

Hughes said Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, would provide expert input to the investigation into how the report was accidentally published. It will be overseen by the independent members of the OBR’s oversight board, Sarah Hogg and Dame Susan Rice.

The terms of reference for the inquiry referred to a “publication error” and said its starting point would be that “the OBR inadvertently made it possible to access the November 2025 economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) too early on budget day”.

The chancellor gave Hughes her backing on Thursday morning despite the breach. The incident was serious, she said, “but I do have confidence in Richard and the OBR”.

The early publication of the document, about 45 minutes before the chancellor was due to deliver her budget in the House of Commons, meant details of her central policies were made public before she announced them.

Hughes said: “I regret the disruption that it caused to the chancellor’s statement and parliamentary proceedings.” Hughes said he expected the investigation to report by early next week, adding that he was prepared to step down if Reeves and Hillier decided as a result of its findings that they no longer had confidence in him.

The shadow chancellor said the OBR was in need of reform. Asked on LBC whether the independent watchdog was fit for purpose, Mel Stride said: “I think, generally, yes it is. I do think it needs reform. “Clearly, this latest incident is both unprecedented and deeply worrying”

Reeves’s budget on Wednesday raised taxes by £26bn in response to weaker OBR forecasts and to pay for higher spending, including on scrapping the two-child limit on benefits. The chair of the business and trade select committee, Liam Byrne, told the Commons on Wednesday that Hughes should “consider his position” in light of the accidental publication.

“I have to say to the House that I seriously think that Mr Hughes needs to consider his position,” Byrne, a former chief secretary to the Treasury, said. “The fact that we had a leak of the OBR forecast before this House got to debate the budget is appalling, and this uncertainty has bedevilled us.”

The relationship between the Treasury and the OBR has at times been fraught in recent months, with Reeves publicly questioning the timing of its review of productivity forecasts. She announced in the budget that the OBR would now assess whether her fiscal rules were met once a year, at the annual budget, not alongside the spring statement as usual.

It was the OBR’s judgment that Reeves risked breaking her rules that prompted her to seek savings at this year’s spring statement, including £5bn of welfare cuts that had to be abandoned after a backbench rebellion.