I will help the hardest hit: Liz Truss hints at support for families and small businesses through cost of living crisis if she wins Tory leadership fight
- Liz Truss pledged more support for families and businesses if she becomes PM
- Tory leadership frontrunner said she will look at problems ‘across the board’
- She insisted she won’t ‘reach for handouts’ before looking at cause of rising bills
- Rival Rishi Sunak warned that she risks plunging economy into ‘inflation spiral’
Liz Truss has hinted that she will give more support to struggling families and businesses to help them weather the cost of living crunch.
Amid pressure to go beyond her promised tax cuts, the Tory leadership frontrunner said she would look at the problem ‘across the board’.
But her rival Rishi Sunak last night warned she risked plunging the economy into an ‘inflation spiral’ if she does not choose between tax cuts or providing support.
Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss has pledged more support for families and businesses if she becomes Prime Minister
Miss Truss has now suggested that more help could be given to small businesses and households being hit by soaring energy prices.
The Foreign Secretary told the Sun on Sunday she would not ‘reach first for the handout’ without looking at the causes of rocketing energy bills.
She added: ‘What I really object to is taking money off people in tax and then giving them the money back in benefits. That doesn’t make sense to me. So that’s why I support keeping taxes low, getting the economy going, growing our economy, dealing with the supply issues.
‘I’m very, very aware that it’s not just customers, or consumers, that are facing energy price problems, it’s small businesses.’
She added that every government ‘has to look at making sure life is affordable for people’ and she’s looking at help ‘across the board’.
The Foreign Secretary told the Sun on Sunday she would not ‘reach first for the handout’ without looking at the causes of rocketing energy bills
Sir John Redwood, who was the head of Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit and is now tipped for a ministerial role under Miss Truss, said she would look at a ‘range of support for people who don’t pay tax’.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘I think the Liz team, from what I read of their statements… will want a mixture of tax cuts for the very good reasons she’s set out, and make sure that benefits and other special payments for energy to both individuals and small businesses are appropriate to the new levels.’
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, a close ally of Miss Truss who is tipped to be her chancellor, also insisted there would be fresh support this winter as energy bills soar.
‘No country is immune from rising prices – least of all Britain,’ he wrote in the Mail on Sunday.
‘I understand the deep anxiety this is causing. As winter approaches, millions of families will be concerned about how they are going to make ends meet. But I want to reassure the British people that help is coming.’ But ex-chancellor Mr Sunak has claimed Miss Truss has committed to more than £50billion in unfunded, permanent tax cuts.
A Sunak campaign spokesman said: ‘The reality is that Truss cannot deliver a support package as well as come good on £50billion worth of unfunded, permanent tax cuts in one go. To do so would mean increasing borrowing to historic and dangerous levels, putting the public finances in serious jeopardy and plunging the economy into an inflation spiral.’
It comes ahead of Ofgem’s announcement on Friday when the regulator is expected to hike the energy bill cap from £1,971 to £3,500.
Mr Sunak’s team has also seized on reports that Miss Truss is not planning to ask the independent Office for Budget Responsibility for a forecast ahead of the emergency budget she is planning for next month.
Ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak has claimed Miss Truss has committed to more than £50billion in unfunded, permanent tax cuts
‘It’s no wonder they want to avoid independent scrutiny of the OBR in their emergency budget – they know you can’t do both and it’s time they came clean about that now,’ the spokesman said.
Former Cabinet minister Michael Gove also criticised Miss Truss’s economic plans as he gave his backing to Mr Sunak. In an article for The Times, he said she was on a ‘holiday from reality’ with her plans for tax cuts during a cost of living crisis.
Mr Gove, who served as levelling-up secretary until he was sacked by Boris Johnson before his resignation as Tory leader, said Miss Truss’s vision puts the ‘stock options of FTSE 100 executives’ before the nation’s poorest.
However, Miss Truss has said that Mr Sunak’s claims that he would return to ‘traditional Conservative economic values’ would plunge Britain into a recession.
She has vowed to reverse his increase in corporation tax and would introduce a one-year moratorium on the green energy levy.
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