Viscount Stansgate
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(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
The Chancellor was not going to set out the entire Budget in advance. She set out the Budget on Budget Day. As I have said before, what she did before the Budget and at the time of the Budget were entirely consistent. She set out her priorities and then delivered on them. She said that if the productivity review were to lead to a downgrade in productivity, it would mean lower tax receipts, and it did. The Chancellor said that she intended to build more headroom, and she did. She said in the summer that policy choices would need to be paid for, and she paid for them. The Chancellor was also clear that challenging decisions would need to be taken on tax, and she took several challenging decisions on tax, including freezing thresholds for a further three years.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for coming to the House and repeating this Statement, which is in two parts. On the first part, some of the comments and exchanges so far have had an element of artificial outrage about them—but we can leave that to the debate on the Budget on Thursday. My question is about the second part of this Statement, which relates to the leak and the information that we have been given about how it seems to have occurred. This is not 1947—for those who understand the reference—but nevertheless it is a very serious matter indeed. If it is not too technical a question, I was wondering whether the IP address that started at 5 am to access this information 32 times has yet been identified, and whether we will be told about what happened, because that is the type of serious breach that we need to avoid in future.
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.