Hugh Johnson

Inside the extraordinary OBR leak that broke the entire Budget: * It was a simple but fundamental mistake, a cock up not a conspiracy. Officials put the report online before the budget on the assumption that nobody would guess the correct link to the document. They could not have been more wrong. * While the link was not put on the OBR’s website, it was still live and could be found with a little basic deduction. Simply entering the web address for the spring statement and substituting March for November would have been enough to find it. As budget leaks go it could not have been more straightforward. * It remains unclear how long the document was online before it was spotted. The OBR says the link “went live” on the morning of the budget, but there is a chance it was uploaded before that. * The metadata for the original file, which details information about its authorship and origins, says the document was created on Monday night at 10.21pm and last modified at 3.10am on November 25, the day before the budget. The OBR did not respond to the question of whether it was in fact uploaded over 24 hours earlier and was simply sitting there until someone guessed the correct link * There is still a lot of anger in Treasury and questions over whether Richard Hughes, the chairman of the OBR, can survive thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…