A section of the King’s Speech document included the former Prime Minister’s name three times advising not to make the same ‘mistakes’ of her mini budget
The briefing document released by the Labour government contained several references to Liz Truss’ 2022 mini budget, which she felt were ‘disturbing’ and impugned her name.
In a letter to Simon Case, cabinet secretary, Truss thanks him for agreeing to remove the ‘attacks’ but demands to know how and why this was allowed to pass through the many people who ‘drafted, edited, proofed or signed off so significant a document.’
When describing the ‘Budget Responsibility Bill’ a sentence says: ‘This Bill delivers the manifesto commitment to introduce a ‘fiscal lock’ – to ensure that the mistakes of Liz Truss “mini budget” cannot be repeated.’
Truss listed out eight questions to Case kicking off by wanting to know whether an investigation had already begun, and exactly who the main civil servants were that were involved.
Labelled as a ‘key fact’ in the document before the edit a bullet point stated: ‘The “fiscal lock” is intended to capture and prevent those announcements that could resemble the disastrous Liz Truss “mini budget”, announced on 23 September 2022, which would have cost £48 billion per year by 2027/28, and was not subject to an OBR forecast and damaged Britain’s credibility with international lenders.’
Rachel Reeves is said to have learnt how not to do fiscal policy from the mistakes of the former Prime Minister and Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
Truss said: ‘I am very disturbed that this material impugning my name found its way into a Civil Service document published the first day of the new Parliament.
‘An impartial Civil Service should surely be conducting thorough analysis of the evidence regarding what happened in the autumn of 2022.’