Baroness Lawlor
Main Page: Baroness Lawlor (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Lawlor's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend, and I agree with him that this was a very serious breach of highly sensitive information—a fundamental breach of the OBR’s responsibility—and it should never have happened. On the IP address, I do not believe that it has yet been discovered, but ongoing investigations may well yield that information. My noble friend is right: we are absolutely determined to ensure that this never happens again and we have set out next steps to make sure that that is the case.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
On 31 October, the OBR told the Chancellor of the £4.2 billion. When the Ministers met that same day, neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor saw fit to share with Ministers the news from the OBR. One Cabinet Minister is quoted as saying:
“Had we been told, we might have been in a position to advise against setting hares running on income tax and giving the public the impression we are casual about our manifesto commitments”.
Was the Minister told of the £4.2 billion, or when did he know of it?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Baroness seems to know very well what went on behind closed doors and what the Prime Minister and Chancellor said to Ministers in various private meetings. I am afraid that I do not think that she does know what went on behind closed doors. As I have said already, on 4 November the Chancellor had £4.2 billion of headroom before those policy choices were accounted for, meaning that she would have a deficit of £2.7 billion before any additional headroom was built.