Rishi Sunak attacks Liz Truss’s plans to curb Bank of England’s independence

theguardian.com:

Liz Truss’s plans to curb the independence of the Bank of England could spook investors and “be bad for all of us”, Rishi Sunak has said as he continued to attack her economic policy.

Sunak, a former chancellor, said the government needed to “let the Bank of England get on with its job with interest rates”.

On Tuesday, he told Sky News: “I’m worried, quite frankly, by reports from others that they want to curb the independence of the Bank of England. I think that would be a mistake, and I think it would spook international investors into the United Kingdom and will be bad for all of us.”

With Truss firmly in the lead to be the next prime minister and less than two weeks to go, she has indicated she would review the Bank’s mandate.

Her ally Suella Braverman, the attorney general, has said the review would look at the Bank’s independence, having said it would examine “exactly what the Bank of England does, and see whether it’s fit for purpose in terms of its entire exclusionary independence over interest rates”.

Sunak warned about Truss’s plans for the Bank of England as well as repeating criticism of her plans for tax cuts, amid a further row about whether her economic policies would be accompanied by independent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

Mel Stride, the chair of the Commons Treasury committee, urged the government’s economic watchdog to produce forecasts alongside any emergency budget this autumn, after Truss indicated she would try to avoid early scrutiny of her plans.

The Conservative MP said the chancellor must ensure that the OBR provided its assessment at the same time as the new prime minister made any big fiscal decisions.

Stride – who is backing Sunak – said the absence of forecasts would