Almost 80 years ago, a Labour chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, had to resign after leaking some tax changes to a journalist while on his way to deliver a budget. “No more on tobacco; a penny on beer; something on dogs and pools but not on horses,” he said, giving one newspaper a scoop.

Prime minister Clement Attlee could not believe it: “He spoke to a journalist? Why would he want to do that?”

How times have changed. This year’s budget was the main political story for weeks beforehand, prompted by official pronouncements – including a set-piece speech by the chancellor of the Exchequer herself. On Budget day, the leaks kept coming; in fact, the entire list of new measures appeared before time on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s website.

The OBR already had a dire record, whether on economic forecasting or , and it now seems it cannot be trusted with confidential information either. One has to wonder if its latest error will signal its death knell, at least in its current guise, which would doubtless delight .

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Before the election, we were told there was “”. Whether it is the fault of this government’s choices or the impact of Brexit, as ministers claim, or the lingering effect of expensive Covid mitigations, growth is stagnant, unemployment is up and the economic forecasts are down.

As a result, today’s budget confirms the tough consequences for those areas supported by public funds, including higher education and research. Unable to find the money from existing sources to bring back maintenance grants, ministers decided earlier this year to invent an entirely new tax on international students, even though these visitors to our shores already subsidise so much else of what higher education institutions do.

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Originally announced in the back in May 2025, the chancellor announced in the budget that the levy will be set at a flat rate of £925 per student from 2028. A flat-rate figure is a victory of sorts for the Russell Group, which particularly disliked the idea that the levy might be set at a percentage of international students’ fees.

But it is still a new cost at a time when many institutions are running substantial deficits, making it more likely the levy will need to be passed on in full to students.

It is clear the levy has not been properly thought through: I visited one world-class university earlier this week, Cranfield, that will have to pay the levy but – because it is (mainly) a postgraduate institution – its students are not expected to be entitled to the new maintenance grants.

Then again, even ministers are no longer pretending the levy is a hypothecated tax, simply saying the money will be “reinvested into higher education and skills”.

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The fact the extra revenue will not be restricted solely to the new maintenance grants is confirmed in a , which was published alongside the budget. This states: “The income raised by the levy will therefore be fully reinvested into higher education and skills, to support the reintroduction of targeted maintenance grants, progression through the post-16 system, and for wider skills.”

The levy is unnecessarily complicated too. It is to be collected by the Office for Students but, if we really are determined to charge international students more, we could simply have used an existing mechanism like the NHS levy instead. The UK is thought to have the longest tax code in the world, at over 10 million words and 22,000 pages, but it seems that is not enough for some.

In a rare fit of pique, Jacqui Smith, the minister for skills, has taken to chastising universities for wanting new initiatives, including new maintenance grants, without recommending alternative sources of funding. This seems a little unfair, as other possible sources of income – like reintroducing a real rate of interest on student loans – have been dismissed, and also because universities have .

But one can still understand the minister’s frustration because there is currently close-to-zero economic growth and a national debt of £3,000,000,000,000 or so – equivalent to 30 years of spending by the Department for Education.

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In the end, the country is not as rich as we hoped it was and the government is still struggling to set the “” of economic growth. University staff and graduates will feel it in their pockets, as the chancellor has also frozen income tax thresholds and student loan repayment thresholds, which will be steadily eroded by inflation.

I am struggling to see the positives but perhaps it all just goes to show the vital importance of educating today’s young people to the best of our abilities. After all, they may be the ones who, in the end, have to get us out of this mess.

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Nick Hillman is director of the ����Vlog Policy Institute.