FORMER chancellor Sajid Javid has insisted ex-prime minister Liz Truss ignored the Treasury with her mini-budget that spooked the markets.
Javid endorsed Truss' Tory leadership campaign, but later said this had been a mistake.
He said he was "certain" the Treasury would have warned Truss about the damage her mini-budget would do, but she chose not to listen.
Javid - who is to stand down as a Tory MP at the next election - defended Treasury orthodoxy, something Truss railed against, by saying it is a “good thing” the department seeks to balance the books in the medium term.
The effects of Truss' mini-budget last autumn are continuing to be keenly felt, with mortgage rates having climbed to more than 6% last month.
Javid told an Institute for Government event: “I’m certain that the Treasury would have told Liz Truss when she was in office that if you go out with a budget that’s going to blow the deficit and without any sort of narrative, any sort of laying the ground or any plans to bring that under control even over the long term, the markets are not going to like it.
"You’re going to get a massive negative reaction.
“The Treasury would have told her, that’s orthodoxy at work. She ignored it and the country paid the consequences.”
Truss is set to launch a new international task force - called The Growth Commission - to investigate the causes of sluggish economic growth in the West
First reported by The Telegraph, the Growth Commission will be chaired by economist and deputy chair of the Centre for Economics and Business Research Douglas McWilliams.
He said that the new body would consider how the West can break out of a “stagnation loop”.
Growth was the dominant pre-occupation for Truss during her bid to become Tory leader and subsequent short-lived spell in No 10.
Truss railed against the “anti-growth coalition”, as she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng sought to use the mini-budget to boost growth in the British economy.
The new commission will reportedly launch on July 12.
