Jeremy Hunt accuses OBR of ‘political intervention’ over spending review

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Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor, has accused the Office for Budget Responsibility of breaching political impartiality over its handling of a review into whether it was given adequate information before the last Budget.

The UK’s independent fiscal watchdog plans to publish the findings of a review into the “adequacy of the information and assurances” on departmental spending the Treasury provided to the OBR on Wednesday, when chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her first Budget.

Reeves has accused Hunt of hiding spending pressure from the public and the fiscal watchdog that left public finances in a far worse state than it had expected.

In a letter to OBR chair Richard Hughes, Hunt said the watchdog’s plan to release its findings on Budget day came as “a surprise and significant concern”, adding that it would be “impossible to defend as anything other than a political intervention”.

“I don’t believe publishing a review with criticisms of the main opposition party on the day of a Budget is consistent with political impartiality,” Hunt added in the letter dated October 25.

Since winning the election on July 4, Labour has stepped up criticism of the state of the public finances as Reeves prepares to unveil up to £40bn of tax rises and spending cuts in the Budget.

The Treasury has failed to fully explain how it arrived at the £22bn number — declining to answer a Financial Times freedom of information request on the subject.

The £22bn figure included £9.4bn from Reeves’ decision to accept independent recommendations for public sector pay rises and £6.4bn of unfunded costs of Britain’s asylum system.

In a reply to Hunt published on the OBR website, Hughes defended the body’s handling of the review, saying it solely concerned “the quality and extent of information” supplied by the Treasury.

“The findings and recommendations solely concern the institutional relationship between the OBR and Treasury,” he wrote. “It does not disclose advice provided to ministers nor comment on, or refer to, the conduct or decisions of ministers.”

Hunt said he would have expected to have been fully engaged with the review and that the OBR should have asked for views “on its contents from the people with whom political responsibility lay at the time”.