OBR: Resignation of Chair

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and the points that she made. I should say very clearly that we take the Budget process extremely seriously and put the utmost weight on Budget secrecy. She will know that a leak inquiry is now under way, with the full support of the Chancellor and the whole Treasury team. She will also know that the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury will conduct a review of the Treasury’s security processes to inform future fiscal events. We will, of course, also work closely with the OBR to ensure that robust security arrangements are in place before the spring forecast and for all future forecasts. On the other points that the noble Baroness raises, she will be aware that the FCA has now written to the Treasury Select Committee confirming that it has not commenced an enforcement investigation.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware from things I have said previously that it would be worth taking a look at the Swedish approach and that of some other countries to an open Budget process that gets away from the kind of shenanigans that we saw in the past weeks. He did not answer me when I raised that before. Will he now commit to taking it back for the Treasury to look at and think about?

Focusing on the OBR, the more I look at this episode, the more I ask myself whether any digital-based data can be truly secure. It is almost like a cat-and-mouse game at the moment, with fists being put into dykes to try to stem leaks, but nothing is reliably effective, and AI will surely be a game-changer that aggravates this. Will the Government consider an open dialogue with the public, the media and, in the case of sensitive financial reports, the financial markets, to consider how we handle data in this changed world, so that we no longer have this environment of leaks and secrecy but find a better way forward?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. She raised her suggestion about the Swedish model before. I think I said then that I do not think that we had any intention of taking that forward, and I say the same thing again today.

It is important to say that we remain absolutely committed to the independence of the OBR. That is incredibly important to the fiscal framework and to our commitment to economic stability. Clearly, it is important that the information it has is treated with the utmost secrecy. That is why it is important that, as I have said, we will work closely with the OBR to ensure that it has robust security arrangements in place for how it treats information.

On the next steps that we intend to take, the OBR has rightly conducted its initial investigation as quickly as possible, and we should now take the time, as I think I have said to the noble Baroness before, to consider its findings and the report in greater detail. The report into the OBR also made the point that it

“could not, in the time available, carry out deeper forensic examination”

of other recent economic and fiscal outlook events and recommended that such an event takes place. We have committed to doing that with the National Cyber Security Centre, as I think the noble Baroness alluded to, although it is important that we note that the report found no evidence of hostile cyber activity.