OBR chief quits
Some late breaking news: Richard Hughes, the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, has resigned after the findings of today’s urgent inquiry by the watchdog into how it inadvertently published Rachel Reeves’s budget 40 minutes early.
In a letter to Rachel Reeves and Treasury select committee chair Dame Meg Hillier on Monday, Hughes said:
“I 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.
“I have, therefore, decided 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.”
Hughes had been expected to testify to the Treasury Committee tomorrow….
Closing summary:
And finally, here’s our news story on the investigation into the OBR budget report leak…
Britain’s budget watchdog has said the early leak of its budget documents before Rachel Reeves made her speech was the “worst failure” in its 15-year history as it emerged a similar breach had occurred earlier this year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said an investigation had found that the leadership of the organisation, over many years, was to blame for the early release of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO) document online nearly an hour before Reeves’s address last Wednesday.
After an investigation headed by the OBR’s chief of staff Laura Gardiner and Ciaran Martin, the former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, the report said a weakness in its procedures was likely pre-existing, and it would audit and improve its systems.
The organisation also admitted that its previous report, published alongside the spring statement in March, had been also been accessed “prematurely” – five minutes into Reeves’s speech after being uploaded online before it was supposed to be, at the end of the speech.
“We are in no doubt that this failure to protect information prior to publication has inflicted heavy damage on the OBR’s reputation. It is the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR,” they said.
It said the Treasury and the Cabinet Office should also shoulder some of the responsibility for maintaining IT systems that lacked the level of security needed to prevent unregulated access by outside bodies.
Airbus has fixed most of its jets affected by a software glitch after a technical problem grounded thousands of its planes, but its shares tumbled on Monday after it discovered a separate issue with its fuselage panels.
The UK government has sealed a deal with Donald Trump guaranteeing that zero tariffs will remain on the imports of UK pharmaceuticals into the US and commits Britain to higher spending on NHS drugs.
The agreement, announced on Monday, secures continued investment by UK pharma companies in the US and will create jobs in the US, the Trump administration said.
