British Prime Minister Liz Truss defended her controversial plan to boost economic growth through tax cuts, despite expectations of a second damaging reversal on Tuesday.

Truss and Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng were poised to unveil a major debt-reduction plan just after a humiliating battle to cut income taxes for the wealthiest, the Financial Times and others reported.

The unveiling will come later this month instead of November 23 and will be accompanied by independent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to calm feverish financial markets, the reports said.

There was no immediate comment from the government as Truss and Kwarteng braced themselves for another difficult day at the governing Conservatives’ annual conference in Birmingham, central England.

But Mel Stride, the Tory leader of the powerful House of Commons Finance Committee, said: “I pressed the Chancellor very hard and to his credit he listened.”

Action ahead of the Bank of England’s next rate-setting meeting on November 3 could “reduce upward pressure on interest rates, to the benefit of millions of people across the country,” he added.

When asked if more U-turns were imminent, Truss was evasive in an interview with the LBC radio show on Tuesday, but was taped Monday.

“I’m committed to continuing this growth package,” she said, emphasizing another component of the plan to curb rising energy costs.

“That’s important, but it’s also important that we listen to the people and take the country with us.”

However, Truss also refused to rule out benefit cuts as poorer Brits grapple with the worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.

“I’m very committed to supporting the most vulnerable,” Truss told BBC radio in another pre-taped interview that aired on Tuesday.

But she added: “We have to look at these issues as a group. We have to be fiscally responsible.”

Potential social spending cuts are emerging as the next battle following the aborted tax cut, with breakaway Tory MPs part of a package that relies on billions more in new loans.

There have also been splits in the cabinet.

Prime Minister Penny Mordaunt, one of the candidates Truss beat in the race for Tory leadership, said it “makes sense” that welfare payments should still rise in line with rising inflation rates.

“I’ve always campaigned – whether it’s for pensions or for our welfare system – to keep up with inflation,” she told Times Radio.

“I’ve voted for it before, and so have many of my colleagues.”

Media coverage of Monday’s about-face was scathing, with many commentators arguing that Truss’s credibility was already in tatters less than a month after she succeeded Boris Johnson.

The Daily Mail newspaper, normally a sharp voice in support of the new leader’s right-wing agenda, headlined its main story: “Pull yourself together!”

Also damning was the coverage of Kwarteng’s lackluster speech at Monday’s Tory conference, which had to be quickly rewritten after the tax plan was abandoned.

The Finance Minister’s joking tone, which he reinforced at an evening reception with the Policy Exchange think tank, was particularly criticized.

The market reaction that sent the pound to all-time lows against the dollar last week was “hullabaloo,” he said.

Policy Exchange, he also told his laughing hosts, is “twice as old as the OBR – it gives you tremendous authority”.

Elsewhere at the Birmingham conference on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Britain had the “strategic stamina” to lead Ukraine “to victory” over Russia.

And Home Secretary Suella Braverman prepared new measures to crack down on migrants crossing the Channel from France on rickety boats as the Truss government seeks to bolster its right-wing image.