Reference to Truss' 'disaster' mini-budget removed from King's Speech files after ex-PM complains to civil service chief

17 July 2024, 19:52 | Updated: 18 July 2024, 00:06

Liz Truss has accused the civil service of breaking impartiality rules after documents accompanying Labour's first King's Speech called her mini-budget a "disaster".

The Conservative former Prime Minister wrote to the head of the civil service, Simon Case, asking him to "urgently investigate how such material came to be included in this document, ensure suitable admonishment for those responsible and the immediate removal of such political [material] from the version of the document on gov.uk".

The references to Liz Truss were removed from the document, a spokesperson for Mr Case said after the letter was sent.

In the letter following the King's Speech on Wednesday, Ms Truss, who lost her Commons seat at the general election, said: "It has been brought to my attention that the King's Speech background briefing notes published today and available online contain repeated references personally to me and actions undertaken by my government in the context of a political attack.

"Not only is what is stated in the document untrue, making no reference to the LDI crisis precipitated by the Bank of England's regulatory failures; but I regard it as a flagrant breach of the civil service code, since such personal and political attacks have no place in a document prepared by civil servants - an error made all the more egregious when the attack is allowed to masquerade in the document among 'key facts'."

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In a briefing made available online after Charles's address at the State Opening of Parliament, the Government had referred to the "disaster" of Ms Truss's radical tax-cutting agenda and cites the Institute for Government think tank as saying the mini-budget was "a lesson in how not to do fiscal policy".

A section of the document outlining the Budget Responsibility Bill - which would seek to strengthen the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - proposes that significant and permanent changes to tax and spend would be subject to an independent assessment by the Treasury watchdog.

This would be introduced "to ensure that the mistakes of Liz Truss 'mini budget' cannot be repeated", the briefing says.

Civil servants are supposed to work as an impartial instrument of the government. But some Conservatives have previously accused parts of the civil service of anti-Tory bias.

Ms Truss herself has said she was "sabotaged" by "the deep state" during her short stint in Downing Street in autumn 2022.

She claimed that the “catastrophic reaction” to the budget that cost her her job had come from the “usual suspects” in both the media and the corporate world, as well as government, the Office of Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England.