Liz Truss is meeting leaders in Prague for the first-ever meeting of the European Political Community, a new group dedicated to advancing security and energy cooperation across the continent. Speaking to journalists this afternoon, she said her attendance was “not about moving closer to Europe”. She said: This is not about moving closer to Europe. This is about working with Europe on issues that we both face. [We] both face rising energy costs, that’s why I took the decision to put in place the energy price guarantee so people in Britain weren’t facing bills of up to £6,000. That is why we’re working with our European neighbours on doing more on the North Sea, on offshore wind, which I have been talking about today. We’re working with our partners on more nuclear energy, so that we’re never in the same position again of being dependent on Russia and Russia using energy as leverage against free democracies. The Labour party has claimed that some people with mortgages could have to pay £500 more per month as a result of the way mortgage rates have risen since the mini-budget last month. (See 10.25am.) Labour made the claim in a press release issued overnight, but it said that a letter from the Bank of England to the Commons Treasury committee released this morning backed up the allegation. The letter includes this chart, showing how UK government borrowing costs rose sharply after the mini-budget, while government borrowing costs in the US and in the eurozone rose only slightly over the same period. The government claims global factors have been behind people having to pay higher mortgages in the UK, but Pat McFadden, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Bank of England chart disproved this. Here is the chart from the letter.
And this is what McFadden said about it. This shows once and for all that the Tories’ kamikaze budget is responsible for the economic chaos we have seen, leaving people with skyrocketing mortgage rates. This is a Tory crisis made in Downing Street. The government’s reckless mistakes show they cannot be trusted to manage the public finances. In a separate development Jonathan Haskel, a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, said that sidelining the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is what happened before the mini-budget, “generates more uncertainty”. In a speech today he said: Echoing the governor’s words of last week, I welcome the usual close involvement in the budget process of the OBR. A sidelined OBR generates more uncertainty by worsening everyone’s information base. Truss has restated her claim that global factors are primarily to blame for interest rates going up in the UK. Speaking in Prague, where she was asked about mortgage rates going up, she said: We’re facing a very, very difficult economic situation. We have rising energy prices and we have rising interest rates around the world. The Federal Reserve has raised its interest rates to 4%. Households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia and Britain experiences a cold snap, National Grid has warned. Labour has said the need for such a warning is a “direct consequence” of government policy. (See 4.33pm.) The former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has conceded that the Northern Ireland protocol is “a little too strict”, raising hopes of further EU compromises as talks reopen between London and Brussels. A Holyrood committee tasked with scrutinising the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill has given its support to the key principles for simplifying how transgender people can update their birth certificates – including the introduction of self-declaration.