Truss won't change fiscal plan after U.K. budget watchdog meeting
BNN Bloomberg
Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government signaled it’s sticking with its plan for tax cuts after a meeting with the UK’s fiscal watchdog, dashing market expectations that a policy U-turn might be imminent.
There are no plans to alter the timetable for Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng to publish a full forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility on Nov. 23, alongside his medium-term fiscal statement, the Treasury said Friday in a statement following a meeting between Truss, Kwarteng and OBR Chairman Richard Hughes.
The pound fell against the dollar, having earlier risen on market expectations that the government might reassess its fiscal plans. It was 0.4 per cent lower at US$1.1075 as of 12:30 p.m. in London.
The unusual meeting between Hughes and the government’s top two figures comes after Truss’s new administration came under heavy fire from economists and politicians for announcing last Friday the biggest set of unfunded tax cuts in half a century, while declining an offer from the OBR to provide an independent forecast.
