Blow for Osborne as Government raises £1 bn less than expected from 4G auction Five mobile phone companies bid for the 4G licenses, with Vodaphone making the highest bid of £790million. However, Labour has attacked the Chancellor and said that his "entire budgetary strategy" was based on incorrect predictions. Chris Leslie, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC: "It's extremely worrying that the Chancellor's entire budgetary strategy seems to be based on numbers that were significantly over-estimated." The Treasury has said that the predictions were made by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), which produces economic forecasts for the Government. "The £3.5 billion number at Autumn Statement 2012 was certified by the independent OBR and based on external expert independent analysis based on similar auctions, including the last 3G one," a Treasury spokesman said. The final auction revenue will be accounted for at Budget in the usual way. Ofcom has said that nearly the whole of the UK will be able to receive 4G mobile services by the end of 2017. John Redwood, the Conservative MP for Wokingham, defended the Chancellor and said the OBR was to blame for over-estimating the revenue from the 4G action. "I think it's entirely predictable all the revenue figures were too high and I have been saying that for two and a half years and this is a rather small shortfall compared with the shortfall on the income tax and other items I've been mentioning," he told BBC Radio 4. But it is the Office of Budget Responsibility doing this, you can't blame the Chancellor for it, he deliberately made an independent budget office who are meant to know about these things and I'm afraid they've been consistently wrong. They've consistently over-estimated the growth in the economy and they've consistently over-estimated the revenues.