Treasury should use price controls in cost of living crisis, say Fabians

HM Treasury should take a more active role with better coordination between fiscal and monetary policy, says the Fabian Society. Photograph: Alamy

The Treasury should use price controls and cuts in VAT during the cost of living crisis to prevent the Bank of England from driving the economy into recession through over-aggressive use of interest rates, a thinktank has said.

Warning of the need for the two institutions to stop operating from separate silos, the left-leaning Fabian Society said poor policymaking in the past quarter of a century had often been the result of the Treasury and the Bank pulling in opposite directions.