OBR raised concerns with Treasury about pre-budget leaking before budget took place, MPs told
Hillier started by asking about the letter sent by the OBR to the Commons Treasury committee on Friday explaining what the OBR told the Treasury in the run up to the budget about its forecasts.
Prof David Miles said the OBR decided to send the letter because there were a lot of misconceptions about the role played by the OBR this time.
He said the letter was meant to be published on budget day. But that was delayed because of the leak of the budget report.
Q: Did anyone from the OBR complain to the Treasury about the pre-budget leaks?
Miles said:
I don’t think there was any formal complaint.
But he said there was more information in the press about what OBR forecasts were saying than was usual ahead of the budget.
There was lots of information appearing in the press which wouldn’t normally be out there and this wasn’t, from our point of view, particularly helpful.
He said concerns were raised with Treasury officials. He went on:
I think it was clear that we did not find this helpful.
Q: Do you know where the information was coming from?
Miles said it was hard to know.
Key events
Asked if the endless leaking was damaging to the economy, Prof David Miles from the OBR told the Treasury committee that uncertainty was not a good thing.
He said the amount of time people had to wait for the budget prolonged that uncertainty.
And he suggested that the speculation about what would be in the budget did not help. The negative impact of the long wait was “exacerbated” by the briefing, he said.
Back at the Treasury committee, Prof David Miles from the OBR was asked if the OBR released the letter giving details of its forecasts because it wanted to show that it was not being used as a political tool by the Treasury.
Miles said it was more about correction misconceptions that were being reported that were “wrong and damaging to the OBR”.
He said these included claims that it had given in to pressure on choosing the window used to assess borrowing costs, that it had “found” some extra money that was helpful to the Treasury, or that its forecasts were varying “all over the shop”.
Angela Rayner to lay amendment to speed up workers’ rights bill
The former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner will lay an amendment on Wednesday to speed up the workers rights’ bill, after “considerable anger” that unelected Lords forced the watering down of day-one rights, Jessica Elgot and Pippa Crerar report.
Lammy says 12 more prisoners have been released by mistake in past month
Twelve more prisoners have been mistakenly freed in the past month and two are still at large, David Lammy has said.
As PA Media reports, earlier data showed 91 accidental releases took place between 1 April and 31 October this year.
In interviews this morning, Lammy, the justice secretary, said 12 inmates had been freed in error since he last gave a statement to the Commons on 11 November. He said he had been “reassured” that the two prisoners still missing are not violent or sexual offenders, but refused to give further details about them.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
I’m not going to give details of those cases, because these are operational decisions made by the police, and you’ll understand if they’re about to arrest somebody they don’t want me to blow the cover.
Lammy said he was pleased with a “downward trend” in accidental releases after he announced stronger security checks for prisons in the wake of Hadush Kebatu’s mistaken release on 24 October.
Miles said stories appeared in the papers saying that the OBR forecasts had improved (after it was reported that Rachel Reeves had decided not to raise income tax in the budget.)
He said this surprised the OBR because there had been no good new that had just come in.
And he said, even though the final forecast was positive (meaning Reeves was on course to meet her fiscal targets), this did not mean that the difficult changes would not have to be made. He said that the headroom was just “a sliver”. And it did not take into account decisions the chancellor would have to take, like funding the decision to reverse the welfare cuts U-turn.
Miles says OBR felt need to correct ‘misconceptions’ about it circulating in media ahead of budget, MPs told
Miles said there were ‘“misconceptions” about the OBR in the material that was leaked or briefed to the press.
He said some reports suggested that the forecasts were fluctuating wildly. That was not true, he said.
And he said some reports suggested that the OBR got to choose what window it would use for borrowing prices when it made its final forecast.
UPDATE: Miles said:
I think we felt that there was a need in that letter to set the record straight on the process by which the forecasts were created by the OBR, in particular to remove some misconceptions about them that we saw circulating in the media …
It might have appeared to some, reading the media, that the OBR came under certain pressure and may have acceded to that pressure on several things, for example removing the window that we used to assess market expectations of interest rates in a way that might have been helpful to the government.
think there was some speculation that we had helpfully come up with extra money, so to speak, some funds found behind the back of the sofa.
OBR raised concerns with Treasury about pre-budget leaking before budget took place, MPs told
Hillier started by asking about the letter sent by the OBR to the Commons Treasury committee on Friday explaining what the OBR told the Treasury in the run up to the budget about its forecasts.
Prof David Miles said the OBR decided to send the letter because there were a lot of misconceptions about the role played by the OBR this time.
He said the letter was meant to be published on budget day. But that was delayed because of the leak of the budget report.
Q: Did anyone from the OBR complain to the Treasury about the pre-budget leaks?
Miles said:
I don’t think there was any formal complaint.
But he said there was more information in the press about what OBR forecasts were saying than was usual ahead of the budget.
There was lots of information appearing in the press which wouldn’t normally be out there and this wasn’t, from our point of view, particularly helpful.
He said concerns were raised with Treasury officials. He went on:
I think it was clear that we did not find this helpful.
Q: Do you know where the information was coming from?
Miles said it was hard to know.
Treaury committee takes evidence from OBR on budget
The Commons Treasury committee is taking evidence from Prof David Miles and Tom Josephs, the two most senior people left at the Office for Budget Responsibility after the resignation of its chair, Richard Hughes, yesterday. Miles and Josephs are members of the OBR’s budget responsibility committee – the three-person committee that runs the OBR. The third member is, or was, the chair.
Josephs started the hearing by offering an apology on behalf of the OBR for the early release of its budget report.
Meg Hillier, the committee’s chair, said today’s hearing would not cover that error.
Tories condemn Starmer as ‘Beijing’s useful idiot’ after he defends engagement with China
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary and a cabinet minister when the last Tory government was cutting back on engagement with China, has hit back at Keir Starmer for what he said in his speech last night. (See 9.52am.) She has described the speech as a “love letter to the Chinese Communist party” and Starmer as “Beijing’s useful idiot”.
In a statement she said:
From China’s continued flouting of economic rules to transnational repression of Hong Kongers in Britain, Stamer’s‘reset’ with Beijing is a naïve one way street, which puts Britian at risk while Beijing gets everything it wants.
Starmer continues to kowtow to China and is captivated by half-baked promises of trade. Coming just days after the latest Chinese plot to interfere in our democracy was exposed, his love letter to the Chinese Communist party is a desperate ploy to generate economic growth following his budget of lies and is completely ill-judged.
While China poses a clear threat to Britain, China continues to back Iran and Russia, and plots to undermine our institutions. Keir Starmer has become Beijing’s useful idiot in Britain.
Starmer says decision by last Tory government to cut back on engagement with China ‘dereliction of duty’
In his speech at the speech at the Lady Mayor’s Banquet last night, Keir Starmer defended his policy towards China and said that the decision by the last Tory government to cut back on engagement with Beijing was “staggering”.
Again, here is the relevant quote in full.
For years the narrative ran that China was the coming power.
Well now it has arrived. And the UK needs a China policy that recognises this reality.
But instead , for years we have blown hot and cold.
We had the golden age of relations under David Cameron and George Osborne, which then flipped to an ice age, that some still advocate.
The result is that, whilst our allies have developed a more sophisticated approach, the UK has become an outlier.
President Trump met President Xi in October, and will visit China in April. Since early 2018, President Macron has visited China twice – and he’ll be again there later this week. German leaders have visited four times, and Chancellor Merz will be there in the New Year.
Yet, during this same period, no British Prime Minister has visited China. And until I met President Xi last November, there had been no leader-level meeting at all for six years.
I’m talking here about the second biggest economy in the world – a nation that accounts for over a quarter of global R&D, and leads in some critical technologies that are key.
With Hong Kong, it is our third largest trading partner, supporting around 370,000 British jobs.
And, My Lady Mayor, I’m also talking about a country that is projecting its power. A permanent member of the UN Security Council, and one of the world’s most powerful militaries that is rapidly growing its nuclear stockpile.
And yes, a country that poses real national security threats to the United Kingdom.
With all that in mind, the absence of engagement is just staggering – a dereliction of duty – because it means that, unlike our allies, we have not been standing up for our interests.
Well, no more.
It’s time for a serious approach – to reject the simplistic binary choice. – neither golden age, nor ice age – and recognise the plain fact that you can work and trade with a country while still protecting yourself.
In fact, we protect ourselves better because we engage.
The British people instinctively understand this. They know we have to deal with the world as it is.
Starmer says using Brexit as foreign policy model would be ‘utterly reckless’, and leave campaign based on ‘wild promises’
Last night Keir Starmer delivered his speech at the Lady Mayor’s Banquet in the City. Traditionally it is a big foreign policy speech and, although it was overshadowed by the resignation of the chair of the OBR, there was some proper news in it.
In his most critical language about Brexit probably since becoming Labour leader, he condemned the “wild promises’” made by Brexiters that he said had not been fulfilled.
And, in a reference to the parties calling for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights (the Conservatives and Reform UK), he said that to take Brexit as a foreign policy model was “utterly reckless”.
Here is the passage in full.
I want to speak very frankly.
The Brexit vote was a fair, democratic expression.
And I will always respect that.
But how it was sold and delivered was wrong.
Wild promises were made to the British people. And not fulfilled.
We are still dealing with the consequences today, in our economy, and in trust – in the degradation of political debate.
Now I raise this not to rake up the past, but to learn from it – and to use it to inform what comes next.
The idea that leaving the EU was the answer to all our cares and concerns has clearly been proved wrong.
But that same spurious argument is now being made about the European convention on human rights, with the same wild promises being made to the country by the same people: Walk away, and all our problems will be solved.
To consider Brexit a template for our future foreign policy is utterly reckless.
Yes the ideology lives on.
It is an attitude of total impunity that says: insult our neighbours, sever our alliances, choose between the EU and the US, sever links with China.
Some even argue that we should leave NATO.
Let me be really clear about that.
At this moment, when war has returned to Europe leaving the most successful military alliance in history would be catastrophic.
As shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer was strongly critical of Brexit. He also pushed for a second referendum, which critics saw as tantamount to a refusal to accept the results of the 2016 vote.
But, by the time Starmer became Labour leader, the UK had formally left the EU. From that point Starmer was reluctant to says almost anything negative about Brexit, because Labour needed the support of leave voters to win in 2024 and it did not want to say anything that sounded as if they were being told the made a mistake.
Recently, though, Starmer has become a lot more confidence about highlighting the flaws in the Brexit project.
David Lammy says his plans to slash jury trials in keeping with Magna Carta, which he says was also response to ‘state failure’
Good morning. David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, will today unveil plans to slash the use of jury trials in England and Wales. With the backlog of cases due to be heard in courts already at 78,000, and heading for 100,000, Lammy will argue that drastic action is needed to handle a “courts emergency”.
The full details will not be unveiled until Lammy stands up in the Commons. The Ministry of Justice is taking the principle that “parliament must be told first” a bit more seriously than some other government departments on this occasion, and the overnight press briefing was a bit short of detail. But Lammy has also given an interview to the Times, and written an article for the Daily Telegraph, and we know roughly where the decision has landed.
In July Sir Brian Leveson, a senior judge, published a report for the government recommending that “either way” offences, where the defendant can currently choose between having the case heard by a magistrate, or by a jury in a crown court, should instead by heard in a new system, with a judge sitting with two magistrates. According to the Times, Lammy proposes to go even further than Leveson – proposing that these cases should be heard by judges sitting alone.
But in another respect Lammy seems to have pulled back. Last week it emerged that he circulated a paper to colleagues proposing that jury trials should be abolished for all cases except those involving alleged rapists and killers. That generated a colossal backlash, and Lammy has reportedly had second thoughts. When Downing Street responded to the leak last week by saying no final decision had been taken, for once that phrase turned out to be true.
According to the leak, Lammy told colleagues privately there is “no right” to a jury trial in England. Today he is telling the Times that he is the saving the jury system. He says:
I will not be standing up in parliament … and announcing that we are scrapping jury trials, which remains a fundamental part of our system, and is one of the big contributions that flow out of Magna Carta — indeed, to much of the common law and the global community. This is about saving the jury system.
And, in a rare example of a minister taking an interest in constitutional history, he also argues that his changes are in keeping with the spirit of Magna Carta. In the Telegraph he says:
Some argue that reform is an attack on the traditions that define our legal system. They reach for Runnymede and Magna Carta, insisting that nothing must disturb the arrangements of centuries past. These are grand claims but they overlook what Magna Carta actually says. Clause 39 promises the judgment of our peers and the law of the land and, crucially, clause 40 warns that to no one will we delay or deny right or justice.
When a victim waits years for a trial, when the courts are so backed up that criminals fear no punishment, when an innocent person sits under a cloud of accusation – justice is denied. Magna Carta was a protest against state failure. If its authors saw the delays in our courts today, they would not urge us to cling rigidly to tradition. They would demand action.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
10am: The OECD publishes its latest economic outlook, including forecasts for the UK.
10am: David Miles and Tom Josephs, the two most senior people left at the Office for Budget Responsibility after the resignation of its chair, Richard Hughes, give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is making a visit in London.
11.30am: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.30pm: David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about plans to curb the use of jury trials.
2pm: The public accounts committee is due to publish responses from the Crown Estate and the Treasury to questions regarding lease arrangements for Royal Lodge, the home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
2.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, gives evidence to the Commons education committee.
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