LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Britain’s government is investigating how details of a bank tax rise were reported in the media before finance minister John Healey announced them in his budget last month, according to a letter published by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
Hours before Healey’s October 28 budget, Bloomberg reported that it would contain a temporary bank tax increase of less than 8%, lower than lenders had feared, sending bank shares rallying.
In a letter to parliament’s Treasury Committee, the finance ministry’s top civil servant James Bowler said he had been assured that no banks, their representatives, or trade bodies were briefed on the changes before Healey’s statement.
However, he said there was a “necessary widening” of the circle of knowledge within government immediately before the delivery of a budget.
Lawmaker Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury Committee, said she suspected the inquiry would find no evidence of a breach.
“We cannot continue to accept this doom-loop of dead-end investigations in which everybody in the Treasury throws their hands up in despair, but nobody is ever found to have done anything wrong,” Hillier said.
She said she would push for answers when Healey appears before the committee on Wednesday.
The leak inquiry represents a setback for Healey, who has sought to tighten Treasury security since last year’s budget, when the budget watchdog’s forecasts were accessible before then-finance minister Rachel Reeves began speaking, as Reuters first reported.
A separate inquiry into a Financial Times report two weeks before that budget that Reeves had dropped plans to hike income tax failed to identify a source.
Nor was a source identified after an inquiry into how the Sun newspaper correctly reported an expansion of the Bank of England’s bond-buying programme before its announcement in November 2020.
($1 = 0.7437 pounds)
(Reporting by Yoruk Bahceli, writing by Sarah Young and Andy Bruce; Editing by Kate Holton)
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