The Office for Budget Responsibility has said its leadership must take “immediate steps to change completely” how it publishes reports containing sensitive forecasts after it mistakenly released an analysis of the Budget early last week.
The OBR launched an investigation with expert input from Professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), after official forecasts were uploaded to the watchdog’s website, releasing details of the Budget almost an hour early.
It was “not a case of intentional leakage”, according to the report released on Monday.
But it recommended a review of the watchdog’s processes for publishing such documents.
“To rebuild trust, the leadership of the OBR must take immediate steps to change completely the publication arrangements for the two important and time-sensitive documents containing the results of its biannual forecasts that it publishes in a normal year, and review arrangements for all other publications,” the report said.
This could either be by moving publishing arrangements for the OBR to the Government’s independent subdomain or by passing the publication of the two annual forecasts to the Treasury.
