LONDON (Reuters) -Prime Minister Liz Truss did not appear in parliament on Monday to answer a question about why the former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked last week, drawing accusations from the opposition Labour Party that she was "scared of her own shadow".
Such was the taunting from opposition parties that at one point Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons standing in for Truss, insisted that: "The prime minister is not under a desk."
Mordaunt said the reason for the PM's absence was "very genuine" but she did not elaborate.
Truss arrived in parliament at the very end of the debate to listen to her new finance minister Jeremy Hunt give a statement on the economy. She did not speak and left again after less than half an hour.
Labour had asked Truss to make a statement "on the replacement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer during the current economic situation", but Mordaunt answered for the government instead.
"The PM is detained on urgent business," she said, drawing laughter from opposition party lawmakers.
The government on Monday scrapped Truss's economic plan and scaled back her vast energy subsidy, in one of the biggest U-turns in British fiscal policy to stem a dramatic loss of investor confidence.
"It is time for leaders to lead, but where is the Prime Minister?" the Labour leader Keir Starmer said to cheers in parliament from his lawmakers.
Mordaunt, who stood against Truss in the summer in the race to become Conservative Party leader before backing the eventual winner when she was herself eliminated, responded by paying tribute to Truss for changing course.
"The decision taken by our prime minister would have been a very tough one, politically and personally," she said. "Yet she has taken it, and she has done so because it is manifestly in the national interest."
In what was a raucous session used by political opponents to criticise the absent Truss, Mordaunt insisted that Truss was not "cowering under her desk", as one questioner put it.
She also said she did not think there had been a coup, when pressed about whether Truss could really still be in charge if she was not present in parliament.
Starmer accused the government of doing long-term damage to the economy.
"Once you have crashed a car at 100 miles an hour you have damaged it for good, and you are going to be paying much more on your insurance for years to come," he said. "And it is working people who will pay."