OBR boss quits after Budget was leaked minutes earlier than Rachel Reeves delivered it
Richard Hughes resigned as chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility following the massive blunder minutes before the Chancellor’s Budget speech last month
Britain’s fiscal watchdog chief has quit after the blundering organisation published its Budget forecast before Rachel Reeves delivered it.
Richard Hughes resigned as chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility in a letter to the Chancellor and Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Treasury Select Committee and a Labour MP.
His letter said: “The inadvertent early dissemination of our Economic and Fiscal Outlook on 26 November was a technical but serious error. I also need to play my part in enabling the organisation that I have loved leading for the past five years to quickly move on from this regrettable incident.
“It is in the best interest of the OBR for me to resign as its chair and take full responsibility to the shortcomings identified in the report.” Mr Hughes said he had decided to resign to allow the watchdog to “quickly move on” from the leak.
But Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Ms Reeves of using the OBR chairman as a “human shield”. She said: “Someone has resigned as a result of the budget chaos… but it isn’t Rachel Reeves.
“The Chancellor is trying to use the Chair of the OBR as her human shield. But I will not let her. Why is it ALWAYS someone else’s fault with Starmer and Reeves?”
Andrew Pakes, Labour MP for Peterborough, told the Commons: “The leak of the OBR report makes deeply worrying reading. So I welcome the resignation of the chair of the OBR because leadership matters on these issues.
“It turns out that the leak was not as unprecedented as we thought last week. As we have seen, they have leaked earlier documents and they may need to go back further in their look at it. This could have led to speculation and costs running into millions for us.”
Treasury minister James Murray thanked Mr Hughes “for his dedication to public service” after he resigned.
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