Reeves will not face ministerial standards probe over Budget briefings

Rachel Reeves will not face an investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics tsar over the handling of the Budget.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage had called for the independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, to investigate the Chancellor’s campaign to “prepare political ground” for tax hikes in the lead-up to the Budget.

But Sir Laurie is understood to have informed Mr Farage there will not be an investigation.

Mr Farage had asked for Sir Laurie to consider whether Ms Reeves had broken the ministerial code by talking down the state of the public finances after receiving preliminary forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

He told Sir Laurie: “The Chancellor conducted a sustained public and media campaign portraying the public finances as being in a state of collapse in order to prepare political ground for approximately £30 billion of tax increases which, on the OBR’s own numbers, were discretionary policy choices rather than unavoidable fiscal necessity.”

It meant the British people are facing a record tax burden on the basis of “a sustained misrepresentation of the true fiscal position”, he claimed.