What’s a budget without a leak? Budget 2013 Leaked by Evening Standard

What’s a budget without a leak?

This years Budget was nearly leak free and it could have been a vast improvement on the previous year when so much of the budget was commonly known beforehand. So much so that by the time the chancellor came to announce it to the commons their was nothing left to quabble over.

But yet again the chancellor of the exchequer was left seething, when “a poor kid on £18k“(according to Tom Chivers at the Telegraph) managing the London’s Evening Standard Twitter account leaked an image of the front page cover detailing market-sensitive information and highlighting George Osborne’s 2013 Budget.

The tweet along with the image was swiftly deleted from the Evening Standard’s Twitter account but the damage had already been done with the Tweet spreading like wildfire across Twitter.

George Osborne was seen to be furious as a pack of Labour shadow ministers laughed and waved their copies of the leaked Budget as Mr Osborne addressed the commons, undoubtedly putting the chancellor off the task at hand.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said: “[Mr Osborne] almost need not have bothered coming to the House because the whole Budget, including the market-sensitive fiscal forecast, was in the Standard before he rose to his feet.”

You might be asking why such sensitive data is at the hands of the press? Information that can effect the lives of millions and vastly affect trading markets but in true British tradition it has long been a practice and almost tradition that the Treasury brief the Evening Standard and a host of other newspapers in the city with specifics before the chancellor announces the official budget to the commons. This is of course strictly confidential and under embargo.

So was this a pre-planned sinister leak or just a simple human mistake?

Let us know your views and comments below!!

 What exactly was leaked by the Evening Standard?

The following has been extracted from the image leaked on Twitter.

• Planned fuel duty hike scrapped
• 1p off a pint but cider up 2p, wine up 10p and spirits up 38p.
• Borrowing up to £61bn
• Income tax allowance will rise to £10,000 by April 2014
• Corporation tax cut to 20% by 2015
• Growth will apparently reach 1.8% next year, 2.3% by 2015. No Triple Dip.
• £2,000 cut to employer NI contributions.

The Evening Standard has since confirmed that the message was accidentally tweeted by a young journalist and has since been suspended from his job.

Sarah Sands, the Evening Standard editor, said:

“An investigation is immediately under way into how this front page was made public and the individual who Tweeted the page has been suspended while this takes place.”

Here is the official Twitter timeline from Joe Murphy at the Evening Standard:

I wish to apologise for a very serious mistake by the @eveningstandard earlier which resulted in our front page being tweeted. 1/2…

— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) March 20, 2013

… 2/2We are so sorry to the House of Commons, to the Speaker and to the Chancellor for what happened. We shall be apologosing to them

— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) March 20, 2013