Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

The Chancellor was clear at the Budget last week that we were taking the fair and necessary taxation decisions to ensure that everyone makes a contribution, but that the contribution of working people is kept as low as possible thanks to the other choices made. Increasing tax on property income, increasing tax on properties worth more than £2 million and reforming gambling taxation all mean that we can keep taxes on working people as low as possible.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

The report on the OBR leak makes deeply worrying reading. I welcome the resignation of the chair of the OBR, because leadership on these issues matters. It turns out that the leak was not unprecedented as we thought last week. It has leaked other documents, and it may need to go back further to look at that. Such leaks could have led to speculation and costs running into millions. Does my right hon. Friend know how many times this has happened before, and if not, does he know when we will know that information? More importantly, does he know how many times the OBR Budget report was viewed externally before the Chancellor delivered the Budget last week?

[James Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and he is right to draw attention to the seriousness of what happened last week. The initial report by the OBR sets out just how many times the report was accessed and shared before the Chancellor had given her Budget speech. There were 32 attempts to access it, starting at about 5 am that day, and it was then shared multiple times before the Chancellor had delivered her Budget speech. We do not have all of the answers to his questions, and the OBR has acknowledged that in the limited time available it has not done forensic analysis of what happened at all previous fiscal events. We know that the EFO for the March 2025 spring statement was certainly accessed. What we will do as a Government is work to make sure we have full information, and urgently find out what was shared—or rather what was inadvertently shared—at previous fiscal events.