Reeves says she did not lie about public finances amid row over deficit claims – UK politics live

Chancellor grilled on Sunday morning shows over whether she misled the public about the state of the economy

Rachel Reeves’s much-anticipated budget was undermined after the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic forecast appeared online about 40 minutes before she announced her policies to the Commons.

The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Richard Hughes, has said he will continue to lead the watchdog unless he loses the confidence of the chancellor, the Treasury committee or parliament.

We will get a report tomorrow, the report that looks at what happened about that budget leak. It was clearly serious. It was clearly a serious breach of the protocol, but I’ll see that report tomorrow.

In the context of a downgrade in our productivity, which cost £16bn, I needed to increase taxes, and I was honest and frank about that in the speech that I gave at beginning of November.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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