Richard Hughes, the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, has quit after the findings of an urgent inquiry by the watchdog into how it inadvertently published Rachel Reeves’s budget 40 minutes early.
Hughes wrote to the chancellor and to Meg Hillier, the chair of the Treasury select committee, last week to apologise after the OBR uploaded its documents setting out the details of the budget before Reeves began to speak on Wednesday.
His resignation follows publication of a report on Monday that described the leak as “the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR” and strongly criticised the watchdog’s processes for protecting sensitive information.
Hughes commissioned Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, to assist with a rapid investigation into what happened, overseen by the independent members of the OBR’s oversight board, Sarah Hogg and Dame Susan Rice.
Hughes’s departure came after Reeves told the Guardian on Friday that she had confidence in him.
In a letter to Rachel Reeves and Treasury select committee chair Dame Meg Hillier on Monday, Hughes said: “I need to play my part in enabling the organisation that I have loved leading for the past five years to quickly move on from this regrettable incident.
“I have, therefore, decided it is in the best interest of the OBR for me to resign as its Chair and take full responsibility to the shortcomings identified in the report.”
More details soon …
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