Officials drop reference to ‘disastrous’ Liz Truss mini-budget

Background briefing notes accompanying the King’s Speech said Labour’s bill would stop Budget measures “being announced without sufficient scrutiny”.

The original document said the move would “prevent those announcements that could resemble the disastrous Liz Truss ‘mini budget’,” adding it had “damaged Britain’s credibility with international lenders”.

It added that Labour’s plans, which it has branded a “fiscal lock”, would “ensure that the mistakes of [the] Liz Truss ‘mini budget’ cannot be repeated”.

In her letter to Mr Case, the former PM argued the description was a “flagrant breach of the Civil Service Code, since such personal and political attacks have no place in a document prepared by civil servants”.

She added it was “an error made all the more egregious” because the description was included in a section headed “key facts”.

She added that the summary was “untrue” and made “no reference” to the “LDI crisis” and “regulatory failures” by the Bank of England.

“LDI crisis” is an allusion to so-called liability-driven investment, believed to have 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 she had “never even heard” of LDI until after the mini-budget.