LONDON — Downing Street today robustly dismissed suggestions that Chancellor Rachel Reeves deliberately misled the nation about the need for tax rises, claiming instead that the entire budget spreadsheet was briefly commandeered by a rogue office ferret named Nigel.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), whose role is to count numbers and then issue urgent clarifications about what those numbers mean, confirmed that Reeves wasn’t at risk of breaking her own fiscal rules. In a move described by analysts as “about as unprecedented as discovering a mug of cold tea in Westminster,” OBR chief Richard Hughes wrote to MPs clarifying there was, in fact, no gigantic economic crater. “It turns out all our calculations were based on an Excel document that had been nibbled at the edges. I regret any confusion caused by Nigel’s enthusiastic input,” Hughes wrote.

Downing Street spokesbeing Percival Blatherwick insisted, “There was no intention to mislead the public. At worst, we were temporarily misled by small mammalian factors beyond our control.”

Meanwhile, Minister for Imaginary Deficits, Fiona Scrabble, explained, “Frankly, these figures are all rather hypothetical. One budget surplus, one deficit—who can really say? We base our fiscal rules on the advice of mystical woodland creatures and sometimes Dave from accounts.”

Reeves herself brushed off criticisms, stating, “If voters wish to have an economy untouched by ferret intervention, they should consider the Liberal Democrats. They’ve promised to run all spreadsheets through a badger first.”

Parliament is expected to debate whether future budget documents should be stored in locked filing cabinets or just laminated against rodent interference.