Image source, Getty Images
- Author, Paul Seddon
- Role, Political journalist
Officials have amended documents describing Liz Truss’s mini-budget as “disastrous” after she complained they showed political bias.
Briefing notes on the king’s speech, published earlier on the government website, said the former prime minister’s approach had damaged the UK’s financial credibility.
They added that Labour’s plans to make advance budget forecasts mandatory would ensure that its government’s “mistakes” “cannot be repeated”.
The statement comes after Ms Truss, who lost her seat in the election earlier this month, called the move a “flagrant breach” of impartiality rules and a “personal and political attack”.
In a letter to Simon Case, the UK’s most senior civil servant, she asked for the information to be removed, with “an appropriate warning to those responsible”.
The Cabinet Office said the documents had now been “corrected and updated”.
A spokesman added that Mr Case had “responded to Liz Truss and ordered that these references be removed”.
The King’s Speech, delivered by the monarch in Parliament earlier, set out Labour’s legislative plans for the coming year after the party returned to power following its landslide election victory earlier this month.
This includes a new ‘Budget Responsibility Bill’ which would legally require the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to produce forecasts of the impact of major tax and spending decisions.
Ms Truss did not release such projections from the watchdog until the September 2022 mini-budget, which announced billions of dollars in tax cuts as well as grant plans to reduce household and business energy bills.
This means there has been no official assessment of the impact on future government borrowing, a factor widely seen as influencing the market’s negative reaction to the measures, which ended his premiership after just 49 days.
“Flagrant violation”
Briefing notes accompanying the King’s Speech said the Labour Party bill would prevent budget measures “being announced without adequate scrutiny”.
The original document said the move would “prevent announcements that might resemble Liz Truss’ disastrous ‘mini-budget'”, adding that it had “damaged Britain’s credibility with international lenders”.
He added that Labour’s plans, which he called a “budget blockade”, would “ensure that the mistakes of [the] Liz Truss’ ‘mini budget’ cannot be repeated.
In her letter to Mr Case, the former prime minister argued that the description was a “flagrant breach of the Civil Service Code, as such personal and political attacks have no place in a document prepared by civil servants”.
She added that it was a “glaring error” because the description was included in a section titled “essential facts.”
She added that the summary was “false” and made “no reference” to the “LDI crisis” and the Bank of England’s “regulatory failures”.
The “LDI crisis” is an allusion to so-called liability-driven investing, which has reportedly made some pension funds more vulnerable to changes in government borrowing rates.
Ms Truss recently accused the Bank of England of failing to inform the Treasury of the risk it posed to the financial system, adding that she had “never heard of” LDI before the mini-budget.
Civil Service Regulations
The Civil Service Code states that civil servants must maintain “political impartiality” and cannot use official resources “for partisan political purposes.”
More specific rules on government communication stipulate that official documents must “seek to explain the government’s decisions of the day in a balanced and objective manner,” without attacking critics.
She adds that civil servants can describe and defend government policies, but should not do so “in partisan terms.”
Ms Truss’s letter is the latest salvo in a long battle with the authorities.
When she ran for Conservative leader in 2022, she regularly blamed “Treasury orthodoxy” for the slow economic growth of recent years.
Since leaving Downing Street, she has also accused the OBR of being part of an “economic establishment” that is too pessimistic about the potential benefits of tax cuts on the economy.
