The Treasury has inadvertently revealed plans for a new advisory body of “leading and respected” economists in documents captured by an official photographer ahead of the new Chancellor’s statement to calm the markets.
A photo of Jeremy Hunt carrying the highlighted papers, which also appeared to stress the importance of “Cabinet unity”, were shared on the Treasury’s Flickr page on Monday.
The wording could be made out in copies of the images shared on Twitter, although they appear to have since been blurred further to obscure their contents.
The Government has increasingly relied on using taxpayer-funded photographers in place of press cameras to shape its image.
In a series of three photos shared by the Treasury, the Chancellor is pictured carrying documents with bullet-pointed notes.
Zooming in on the copies shared by a journalist on Twitter, it was possible to make out a line on plans to establish a new “economic advisory” body – possibly a “council”, although the exact wording was obscured by Mr Hunt’s hand – consisting of “leading and respected economists”.
Further down, the document appeared to state: “I must emphasise – showing Cabinet unity on these measures is critical to achieving the stability we need.
“Comms discipline is vital – the detail of these announcements must not be made public before the press conference later if we want them to have the right impact.”
The captions on Flickr suggest that the images were taken ahead of the Chancellor’s emergency statement on Monday morning.
Mr Hunt scaled back the energy support package and ditched “almost all” the tax cuts announced by his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng less than a month ago as he attempted to restore economic stability following weeks of turmoil on the financial markets.
