Chancellor Rachel Reeves hit out at ‘frustrating’ and ‘unacceptable’ leaks of her second Budget on November 26 and told MPs the Cabinet Office was now investigating
A full Budget leak inquiry is underway in government, Rachel Reeves has confirmed.
The Chancellor hit out at “frustrating” and “unacceptable” leaks of her second Budget and told MPs the Cabinet Office was now investigating. Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler told MPs the leak inquiry would cover ministers as well as officials and advisers.
Ms Reeves told the Treasury Committee: “The Budget had too much speculation, there were too many leaks, and much of those leaks and speculation were inaccurate.
“That is why I am doing something about it, because we cannot allow this to happen again. A leak inquiry is under way with my full support, being led by the permanent secretary at the Treasury, and we are also conducting a review of the Treasury security processes to inform future fiscal events.”
She added: “We also clearly need to look explicitly at physical IT security. The Treasury have asked the National Centre for Cyber Security to undertake a forensic examination of recent economic and financial outlooks.
“The outcome of that review, of course, will be public, and we’ll write to you with the outcomes of that review.”
Ms Reeves appeared particularly frustrated over a pre-Budget leak that she had dropped her mooted plans for a manifesto-busting hike in income tax on November 13.
She told MPs: “It was not an off-the-record briefing, it was a leak. I’m absolutely categorical that that was not an authorised briefing. It was incredibly damaging and frustrating. That is why we have a leak inquiry.
“It was not briefing that was signed off by me, any of my ministers or officials. It was unacceptable. That is why there is a leak inquiry going on.”
An hour before the Budget, the entire plan was also inadvertently leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – leading to the resignation of its chief, Richard Hughes. Mr Hughes said last week he would step down over the humiliating blunder, which was branded the “worst failure” in the watchdog’s history.
The Chancellor also told MPs she and Keir Starmer decided “together as a team” to freeze tax thresholds, which she again insisted did not amount to a breach of the manifesto promise not to hike taxes for working people.
Asked whether the PM made the decision not to raise income tax, the Chancellor told the Treasury Committee: “In the end, because of the decisions we made on high-value council tax on property and dividends and a number of other measures, we were able to keep the contribution from working people as low as we possibly could.
“The Prime Minister and I met two, three times a week during the Budget process. That is not always the case between chancellors and prime ministers. I recognise that. But there is a very close partnership between myself and the Prime Minister. And so we took him through all of the numbers and all of the options and we decided it together as a team, because that is what the Prime Minister and I am.”
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