PMQs: Liz Truss faces MPs for first time since mini-budget sparked financial chaos – live | politics

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key events (7)Liz Truss (fifteen)Jacob Rees-Mogg (7)Keir Starmer (5)

Starmer says Labor voted against increasing Social Security in the first place. Truss voted for it. “So who’s doing the U-turn?”

He says she’s aiming for a tax cut for rich companies that didn’t even ask for it. Why should professionals foot the bill?

half-timbered Starmer has not yet said whether he supports the energy price guarantee. It’s the biggest part of the mini budget. Labor plans six months. According to Starmer, what should happen in March?

Starmer asks when Truss will do the right thing and “reverse the kamikaze budget that’s causing so much pain.”

half-timbered says she is “really unclear” about Labor’s stance on the energy price guarantee. It was most of the mini-budget. Will Labor undo it?

Starmer asks if PM understands why people facing higher mortgage payments are angry at her.

half-timbered says people were facing very high energy bills when she came in. The energy package accounted for most of the mini-budget, she claimed. Labor has refused to back it, she says.

And interest rates are rising around the world, she says. She helps people with lower taxes and with their energy bills.

She claims Labor had a Damascene conversion when she backed the lifting of health and social security contributions last night.

Truss refuses to say if Rees-Mogg was right when he said the mini-budget wasn’t to blame for the market turmoil

Keir Starmer says Jacob Rees-Mogg argued this morning that the turbulence in the markets has nothing to do with the budget. Does the PM agree?

half-timbered says she has taken decisive action on energy bills. Her plan would last two years; Birth lasts only six months. And the government is protecting the economy at this very difficult time.

The line “Protection of the economy” provokes loud laughter.

Truss says the government will proceed with plans to ban evictions without fault

Graham Stringer (Lab) says scaring the markets and raising the cost of borrowing was “an act of gross incompetence” rather than an act of malice. But it would be extreme to put plans to ban evictions on hold. Can she assure MPs that her government will ban her?

“I can,” he says half-timbered.

Yesterday, No. 10 refused to give that assurance.

Liz Truss says this Saturday marks the first anniversary of the assassination of Sir David Amess. He represented the best in Parliament, she says.

Here is the list of MEPs asking a question.

PMQ’s Photo: HoC

Liz Truss has arrived in the chamber. There was loud cheering – some perhaps ironic.

From Skys Joe Pike

Tory benches comparatively sparse for #PMQs? A few gaps.

Chief Whip Wendy Morton paces the chamber.

Starmer in his place.

— Joe Pike (@joepike) October 12, 2022

Insulate Britain protesters block Parliament Square, ITV Karl Dinen reports.

Truss faces MPs at PMQs for the first time since the mini-budget debacle

Liz Truss will take PMQs in about 10 minutes. It is only their second PMQ ever and their first since the mini-budget alarmed financial markets and government borrowing costs have risen, which has also pushed up mortgage costs. It is hard to imagine that a government announcement in this day and age could have backfired so disastrously and so quickly.

As the Economist points out in its editorial, Truss can now either “cut the state, reverse the course of the tax cuts, or carry on as if nothing was really wrong.” Neither of these options are palatable, but we may get a hint at PMQ’s which of them she will choose.

Economists tell the Commons Treasury Committee that the mini-budget has sparked market turmoil

Economists testifying before the Commons Treasury Committee have insisted the mini-budget was a major cause of the turmoil in financial markets – although Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, refused to accept it on the Today program this morning . (See 9:21 am.)

Torsten bellChairman of the Board of Directors of the Resolution Foundation told the committee:

Yeah, firing Treasury officials isn’t a good idea, that didn’t help, sidelining your financial watchdog didn’t help.

But the big picture is that if you spend the summer telling people you intend to abandon tax orthodoxy, if you then announce a package that abandons tax orthodoxy, and if you say on Sunday that you are so I don’t think any of this should come as a surprise to any of us that you end up here and that’s what happens if you’re not careful.

Maybe you could have gotten away with it in more favorable times, it wouldn’t have been a good idea at any time, but you definitely shouldn’t do it in the current climate.

It was always difficult, but precisely because it would always be difficult not to do it.

and Sanjay Raja, Deutsche Bank’s UK chief economist, told the committee that while the problems had “absolutely a global component,” they also had an “idiosyncratic UK-specific component.” He said:

You throw at the September 23 event [the mini-budget]You sidelined a financial watchdog, you lack a medium-term fiscal plan, one of the largest unfunded tax cuts we’ve seen since the early 1970s, it was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back.

At the hearing, Labour’s Angela Eagle asked the five testifying economists if they thought the turbulence in the markets was a result of the mini-budget. All panel members, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Paul Johnsonand Gemma Tetlowthe chief economist at the Institute for Government nodded.

Liz Truss tweeted about the energy price bill.

We are taking action to protect people from rising energy costs caused by Putin’s barbaric campaign.

This government is acting decisively to ensure that people and businesses across the country have safe, affordable, and competitively priced energy. https://t.co/syIval1qRL

— Liz Truss (@trussliz) October 12, 2022