Treasury may have broken law by failing to reveal £9.5bn spend in Tory budget, MPs told

The head of the OBR said the disclosure would have ‘materially changed’ a forecast predicting the impact on the economy of Jeremy Hunt’s March budget. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

Treasury officials may have broken the law when they failed to alert the Office for Budget Responsibility about £9.5bn of spending that should have appeared in the March Tory budget, MPs have been told.

Laws governing how the Treasury gives information to the OBR could have been breached when civil servants kept spending commitments under wraps, the government’s independent economic forecaster said.