Labour calls for inquiry into Budget leaks Labour has demanded the government hold an leak inquiry, after various newspaper and TV outlets accurately reported several of Chancellor George Osborne's plans before the Budget was officially delivered to Parliament. But answering the urgent question on 22 March 2012, Exchequer Secretary David Gauke said he had no knowledge of any specific leaks and pointed out that there had been several inaccurate reports, as well as accurate ones. The minister told MPs that producing a Budget within a coalition was different to producing one as a single-party government. The days of the chancellor coming up with a Budget in secret are gone. This was not a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat Budget, it was a coalition Budget," he said. He continued: "In the course of coalition Budget negotiations, various proposals were raised, discussed and debated." On the specific point of a leak inquiry, he said it was a "long-established practice" of the Treasury not to comment on whether a leak inquiry has been established or not. But shadow Treasury minister Chris Leslie was not satisfied by his answer. The government should not use the coalition as a "fig leaf" for "very serious breaches" of the ministerial code, he said. "It's a significant insult to the primacy of Parliament and the House of Commons to whom the chancellor should be accountable," he continued. Mr Leslie said voters expected Parliament to be the first in line for announcements from the chancellor but he said the Commons had been treated as a "peripheral afterthought." "This risks handing privileged information to those who could take advantage of any advanced knowledge," he warned.