Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Radio 4 Today presenter Mishal Husain of failing to meet the BBC's impartiality standards. He made the accusation after she suggested the Government's mini-budget had unleashed the recent chaos in financial markets.
Mr Rees-Mogg sought to claim that the Bank of England's decisions on interest rates had caused the turmoil, rather than Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's plans to borrow more to fund tax cuts. Ms Husain said there is a "very serious economic and investor confidence picture that has been sparked by the mini-budget" as she questioned the minister on the programme today (October 12).
Mr Rees-Mogg told her: "You suggest something is causal, which is a speculation. What has caused the effect in pension funds, because of some quite high-risk but low-probability investment strategies, is not necessarily the mini-budget – it could just as easily be the fact that, the day before, the Bank of England did not raise interest rates as much as the Federal Reserve did.
