Mini-budget votes to be delayed until spring

Truss wins breathing space as Tory rebel MPS hoping to amend Finance Bill may have to wait until March

‘We had a nation in mourning and then, literally, four days after the funeral we had the mini-budget’

‘Nobody’s talking about the energy intervention. That was a huge use of the balance sheet to help people’

CRUNCH votes to implement last month’s mini-budget will not take place until next spring, The Daily Telegraph understands, putting off potential Commons rebellions until 2023.

Many of the tax-cutting measures that Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor, announced will not need to be passed in the Commons until next March.

That includes bringing forward the 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax and scrapping a planned rise in corporation tax, two of the most costly moves in the package.

It means Tory rebels hoping to attach amendments to the Finance Bill may have to wait almost six months, potentially buying Liz Truss breathing space.

Votes on reversing the National Insurance rise and implementing a stamp duty cut are expected sooner but appear to have wide support among the Tory benches.

The National Insurance move was a central pillar of Ms Truss’s successful leadership bid over the summer, meaning few Tory MPS are expected to rebel in the vote due next Tuesday.

Yesterday, there was confusion as Mr Kwarteng appeared to row back on

Downing Street indications, given the previous night, that he would reveal his new fiscal plan earlier than expected.

Mr Kwarteng had said that the socalled “medium-term fiscal plan”, which will spell out his approach to bringing down the national debt and restraining spending, was coming on Nov 23. But that appeared to contradict word from his allies, 24 hours earlier, suggesting the announcement and the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast would come sooner.

It was expected both announcements would be later this month, in time for the Bank of England’s interest rate decision on Nov 3. That appears in doubt.

The failure to produce an OBR forecast alongside the mini-budget was seized on by economists and critics to partly explain the reaction from the markets.

Mr Kwarteng also appeared to cast some blame yesterday on the “pressure” of the Queen’s death for mistakes in his tax-cutting fiscal statement. He said: “We had a nation in mourning and then, literally, four days after the funeral we had the mini-budget.

“It was a high-speed, high-pressure environment and we could, as David Cameron used to say, have prepared the pitch a bit better.”

Mr Kwarteng has been under pressure after his mini-budget triggered market turbulence and a political backlash, leading to scrapping the abolition of the 45p top rate of income tax.

Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference last night, he complained that his energy price freeze was getting too little attention due to the 45p tax row. He said: “If you look at the energy intervention, I mean, nobody’s talking about the energy intervention. That was a huge use of the balance sheet to help people. People were facing bills of potentially £6,000 next year, and we’ve intervened.

“There’s gonna be a limit of £2,500. That’s a huge intervention.”

Mr Kwarteng has also said the Treasury he inherited from Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson was “unsustainable”.

He said: “We were spending billions and billions and billions and raising the money in tax.

“How can that be sustainable, when we have a very, very high tax burden and very low growth? We had to come off that trajectory.”