From 1h agoKey events1m agoTruss claims mini-budget tax cuts were ’fairly marginal’4m agoTruss says her premiership and mini-budget have given her ‘real insight’ into why delivering free market policies so hard23m agoTruss says problem with NHS not lack of money1h agoFormer Tory Treasury aide accuses Liz Truss of ‘brass neck’ in thinking party wants her advice on economic policy1h agoLabour calls for Liz Truss’s resignation honours list to be blocked as ex-PM gives speech defending mini-budgetFilters BETAKey events (5)Liz Truss (8)1m ago05.58 EDTTruss claims mini-budget tax cuts were ‘fairly marginal’
Q: Will you apologise to people for interest rates going up?
Truss says interest rates were going up anyway. “The tax cuts we were were introducing were not major tax cuts,” she claims. She says they would have made a “fairly marginal difference”. But she was indicating a direction of travel, she says.
Updated at 05.59 EDT4m ago05.55 EDTTruss says her premiership and mini-budget have given her ‘real insight’ into why delivering free market policies so hard
Truss is now taking questions from people in the audience.
Q: Do you think you should have consulted the Office for Budget Responsibility about your mini-budget plans?
Truss said the OBR was not asked to give a view on Covid spending decisions, like furlough. That reflects an underlying assumption that spending is good, she says.
She says there was no need to have an OBR forecast for the mini-budget. Her government was planning do to one later in the autumn.
Because the mini-budget spending plans were not bigger than furlough, her government did not think an OBR assessment was needed.
She also says she does not think the BBC did a good job of analysing the LDI [liability-driven investments] crisis in the pensions industry.
(The mini-budget collapsed because of the impact on LDIs in the pension industry. She seems to be saying the BBC was at fault for not warning her about this.)
Q: What is your response to Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, who said that instead of delivering Singapore on Thames, you delivered Argentina on the Channel? And do you see Rishi Sunak as part of the Tory anti-growth coalition?
Truss says people like Carney, and other central bankers, are not admitting their responsiblity for allowing government borrowing to get out of control. She says Carney is part of the economic consensus over the past 25 years that have led to low growth.
On the subject of anti-growth Tories, she says the part is split on this. People like her want to focus on growth. But some of her MP colleagues do not agree. She is making this speech today because she wants to win the argument, she says.
Q: Do you accept that you have personally undermined support for the policies that you support?
Truss says the mini-budget was attacked by international economic bodies.
But she had a choice – either accept the orthodoxy, or challenge it. She chose to challenge it.
In her book, which is out in…
2023-09-18 04:42:25
Original from www.theguardian.com
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