Head of OBR resigns after Budget day publishing error

Rachel Clun
Business reporter

Hughes took up the job during the Covid pandemic in October 2020, before inflation began to rapidly rise in 2021. Speaking to the Observer in December that year he said, external it would be nice to have “some semblance of normality to think about longer-term issues a bit more”.

However the year after that, in September 2022 came the infamous Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget, for which the OBR was not asked to produce forecasts.

Hughes’s five-year term was set to end in October this year, but in May, Chancellor Rachel nominated him for a second five-year-term.

Hughes has had a long career in top financial and economic institutions. He was the director of fiscal policy at Treasury between July 2016 and April 2019, and prior to that he was the division chief of the International Monetary Fund’s fiscal affairs department for eight years.

A fluent French speaker, Hughes spent six months advising the French government on its multi-year budget planning before he joined the IMF.

Hughes has a bachelor degree in political science from Harvard and a masters in development economics and international development from Oxford.