The Office of Budget Responsibility, already in political trouble over changes to unemployment statistics that favoured the Government, could also face charges that it breached the Code of Practice on official statistics.
 
Last week the OBR altered the date of publication of its jobless projections by 24 hours, enabling David Cameron to rebut opposition charges in Parliament that the coalition’s public spending cuts would lead to the loss of 1.3 million jobs.
 
Sir Alan Budd (pictured), who heads the OBR, told the Treasury Select Committee yesterday that there had been no political pressure to change the numbers or bring forward publication. However, that’s not the whole point.
 
The statistics watchdog, the UK Statistics Authority, takes the view that data released by Government departments and concerning issues of major political importance are official statistics, and should follow the code. This says, among other things, that official statistics should be made equally available to all, subject to statutory provisions for pre-release access.
 
Sir Alan suggested that the jobless figures had been generally known in the Treasury several days before they were published, and also that it had been wrong for the Prime Minister to draw the conclusions he did from them.
 
This appears to ride roughshod over the code of practice. If the OBR is an independent body, as it purports to be, its figures should be published on a date announced in advance, not released early to ministers, not have the publication date arbitrarily changed, and be made available equally to all. None of these conditions appears to have been met.
 
I suspect we may not have heard the last of this.