Liz Truss has lodged an official complaint with the UK’s top civil servant after being repeatedly mentioned in documents published for the King’s Speech.
The former prime minister’s “disastrous” mini-Budget is referenced three times in briefing notes on the government’s plans for the year ahead which were published this morning.
One states that the planned Budget Responsibility Bill “delivers on the manifesto commitment to introduce a ‘fiscal lock’ to ensure that the mistakes of Liz Truss mini-Budget cannot be repeated”.
Another says: “The fiscal lock is intended to capture and prevent those announcements that could resemble the disastrous mini-Budget.”
The final reference states: “The Institute for Government have said that ’Rachel Reeves has made welcome moves to improve fiscal policy making – Liz Truss’s autumn mini-Budget is a lesson in how not to do fiscal policy.”
A furious Truss has now written to Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, demanding the references to her are removed from the documents, which are available to read on the government website.
She said: “Not only is what is stated in the document untrue … 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’.
“Will you please 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 [the government website].”
She later posted the letter on her X account, describing it as “more evidence of a lack of Civil Service impartiality”.
HuffPost UK has approached the government for comment.
