The Office for Budget Responsibility has said its leadership must take “immediate steps to change completely” how it publishes reports containing sensitive forecasts after it mistakenly released an analysis of the Budget early last week.

This could either be by moving publishing arrangements for the OBR to the Government’s independent subdomain or by passing the publication of the two annual forecasts to the Treasury , the watchdog said after probing the incident.

The OBR launched an investigation with expert input from Professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), after official forecasts were uploaded to the watchdog’s website, releasing details of the Budget almost an hour early.

It deemed the leak of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO)

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