BRITAIN’S fiscal watchdog chief resigned today as he “paid the price” for Chancellor Rachel Reeves “misleading” the public over the state of the country’s finances.

Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chairman Richard Hughes stepped down after the organisation published details of the Budget before she delivered it in the Commons last Wednesday.

A Treasury minister called the leak a “very serious breach of highly sensitive information” after journalists and MPs were able to read the document for 40 minutes before she had stood up.

An OBR report revealed today that the document was accessible online via a “predictable” URL, and neither intentional nor the work of a hostile actor.

In a letter sent to Ms Reeves and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Mr Hughes said that he wants to ensure the OBR gets the chance to “quickly move on” from the “technical but serious error.”

He said that he needs to “play my part” in helping the OBR “regain and restore [its] confidence and esteem” by implementing the recommendations set out in its report.

Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths raised fears that Mr Hughes had been used as a “human shield” for Ms Reeves after she allegedly gave an overly pessimistic impression of the country’s economic picture in a speech on November 4.

PM Sir Keir Starmer insisted that she had not misled the public despite widespread criticism and even the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason saying that she had.

Mr Griffiths told the Morning Star that Mr Hughes had “paid the price for leaking the truth while she’s been setting false hares running.”

Noting the OBR’s forecasts “showed that Britain’s growth prospects were being downgraded” despite the government repeated claims to be prioritising the economy, he added: “The OBR leaked the real Budget when she had been leaking the false Budget for weeks.

“It does seem topsy-turvy that he’s been punished for leaking the truth when she’s been, in the run-up to the Budget, letting out false hares that bore no relation to the truth.

“The leaking of the Budget was unfortunate in many ways because the announcement was supposed to have been made to Parliament and the public first as part of her Budget statement.

“The whole thing is a bit of a ridiculous melodrama anyway — the secrecy of the Budget especially — as she had been issuing false leaks for weeks in the run-up to it.”

A Momentum spokeswoman said: “it is deeply concerning that it appears the Chancellor may have been hiding behind the pro-austerity Office of Budget Responsibility in order to prevent the public spending needed to transform living standards in the UK.

“Despite welcome moves like the scrapping of the 2 child cap, living standards are still projected to stagnate under Labour.

“Only a complete overhaul of the economy will deliver change for the people Labour was founded to represent.”

Today PM Sir Keir Starmer insisted that there was “no misleading” by the Chancellor over the state of the public finances ahead of the Budget.

Ms Reeves has faced claims she misled voters by overstating the scale of the fiscal challenge in the run-up to last week’s Budget in which she announced £26 billion worth of tax rises.

She has also reportedly been accused of misleading the Cabinet.

The Chancellor has said that an OBR forecast showing a £4.2bn surplus against her borrowing rules did not take into account the welfare reform U-turn or the abolition of the two-child benefit cap.

The Prime Minister said: “There was no misleading, and I simply don’t accept, and I was receiving the numbers, that being told that the OBR productivity review means you’ve got £16bn less than you would otherwise have had shows that you’ve got an easy starting point.

“Yes, of course, all the other figures have to be taken into account.

“But we started the process with significantly less than we would otherwise have had.”

He said there was “no pretending” that it was a “good starting point.”

At one point he thought Labour would have to breach its manifesto, he said, in an apparent reference to scrapped plans to raise the basic rate of income tax.

He added: “There was a point at which we did think we would have to breach the manifesto in order to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

“Later on, it became possible to do it without the manifesto breach.

“Given the choice between the two, I didn’t want to breach the manifesto, and that’s why we came to the decisions that we did.”

The Chancellor meanwhile rejected a report in The Times from an unnamed minister who claimed the Cabinet was “at no point” told about the “reality” of the OBR forecasts.