THE embattled Prime Minister and her Chancellor will meet with the head of the Office of Budget Responsibility on Friday, in the latest effort by the pair to reassure markets and voters that the economic turmoil sparked by their “mini-budget” is under control.
It comes after bombshell revelations that Kwasi Kwarteng refused the OBR’s offer to publish a new economic forecast on the effects of his policies – despite it having "been in the position to do so to a standard that satisfied the legal requirements".
Treasury and Downing Street sources hit back at suggestions that it was an emergency meeting with OBR chair Richard Hughes, but it comes after days of chaos in the financial markets and fears of rocketing mortgage bills.
READ MORE: Bombshell letter shows Chancellor refused expert forecast before mini-budget
In a nonetheless unusual move for a prime minister, Liz Truss will join Kwarteng in the meeting with Hughes, the head of the independent spending watchdog pushed to the fore amid the political and economic fallout from Friday’s mini-budget.
News of the meeting was welcomed by Tory MPs, who expressed hope that it could mark the start of the process to win back the confidence of the financial markets.
Chair of the Treasury Select Committee Mel Stride, one of the growing caucus of Conservatives with concerns about the Government’s plans, urged the meeting to be a “reset moment”, echoing earlier calls from fellow Tory MPs for a “plan B” from the Government.
Stride was also among those calling on Kwarteng to bring forward his planned statement setting out how he intends to get the public finances back on track after the OBR said it could produce a preliminary set of forecasts by October 7.
The Chancellor is currently scheduled to deliver his medium-term fiscal plan explaining how he would get debt falling as a percentage of GDP, alongside the updated OBR forecasts, on November 23.
On BBC Newsnight, veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown joined those calls, telling the programme that he feared further “turmoil” in the markets if the date of the statement is not changed.
It comes as a YouGov poll for The Times showed Labour opening up a massive 33-point lead over the Conservatives, raising further questions about Truss’s leadership only a few weeks into the job.
Sir Charles Walker, one Tory MP commenting on the poll, admitted that his party could be “wiped out” if an election was called tomorrow.
Former Cabinet minister Julian Smith also urged the Government to reverse course on cuts to the top rate of tax, saying it must “take responsibility” for the reaction to Friday’s mini-budget.
READ MORE: Douglas Ross smirks and heckles as he's told of Tory damage to UK economy
Despite the growing unease, both the Prime Minister and Chancellor have said they are still committed to the economic scheme, arguing that their £45 billion package of tax cuts is the “right plan” for the economy.
And while declining to comment directly on the economic turmoil created by the mini-budget, Truss told a round of BBC local radio interviews that her administration had to take “urgent action” to kick-start the economy and protect consumers from rising energy costs.
During a visit to an engine plant in Darlington, Kwarteng said the package he announced in the Commons on Friday was “absolutely essential” if the economy was to generate the revenues needed to fund public services.
Fresh details also emerged on Thursday about the lack of an independent OBR forecast to go along with the fiscal event last week, with the OBR revealing that it had prepared a draft forecast for the new Chancellor on his first day in office.
READ MORE: BBC veteran David Dimbleby hits out at Tory 'sh**storm' in rare on-air expletive
The lack of such a forecast had been one of the issues that reportedly troubled the City after the Chancellor’s announcement.
In a letter to the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford and the party’s shadow chancellor Alison Thewliss, Hughes confirmed that the body sent “a draft economic and fiscal forecast to the new Chancellor on September 6, his first day in office”.
He wrote: “We offered, at the time, to update that forecast to take account of subsequent data and to reflect the economic and fiscal impact of any policies the Government announced in time for it to be published alongside the ‘fiscal event’.”
He said that the OBR was not commissioned to produce an updated forecast, but confirmed that it would have been in “a position to do so to a standard that satisfied the legal requirements of the Charter for Budget Responsibility”.
Blackford called the details contained in the letter “utterly damning”.
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