Sajid Javid has backed Liz Truss to become the next Conservative leader. The former home secretary believes Rishi Sunak’s economic plans would lead Britain “sleepwalking into a high-tax, low-growth” economy and suggested his refusal to cut taxes risked Britain becoming a “middle-income economy” with a loss of “global influence and power”. Javid told The Times that Truss had the “willingness to challenge the status quo” warning there were “no risk-free options in government”.
His move comes ahead of the latest Tory leadership hustings in Cardiff at 7pm tonight.
At the third hustings in Cardiff, Liz Truss said she wants to “extend” the government’s contentious Rwanda migration policy “to more countries” in an attempt to stop small boat crossings. The foreign secretary also told the audience she would increase economic growth first by “getting rid of all EU laws” still in place by the end of 2023.
On Liz Truss’s public sector pay U-turn, Rishi Sunak said he is “glad she U-turned on that policy” and says it would have cut the wages of half a million workers in Wales. Truss blamed “the media” for having “misinterpreted” her £8.8 billion policy to cut public-sector pay outside London that she abandoned after criticism from Conservative colleagues.
Sunak’s flagship policy in Wales of introducing two new freeports in the country was met with muted applause.
Sajid Javid has backed Liz Truss to become the next Conservative leader. The former home secretary believes Rishi Sunak’s economic plans would lead Britain “sleepwalking into a high-tax, low-growth” economy and suggested his refusal to cut taxes risked Britain becoming a “middle-income economy” with a loss of “global influence and power”
A new poll by ConservativeHome finds Liz Truss is most likely to become the next prime minister, with 58% of those asked backing her. Rishi Sunak has the support of 26% and 12% are undecided.
Parliament has taken down its newly created TikTok account after Conservative MPs sanctioned by China raised concerns about the social media platform’s data security.
A YouGov poll conducted for the Times found that Conservative party members still believe Boris Johnson would make a better prime minister than the two leadership contenders, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Asked who they thought would make the better prime minister, Truss leads Sunak by 58% to 29%. But throwing Johnson into the ring shows him winning, with 40% saying he would make the best PM, to Truss’s 28% and Sunak’s 23%.
Finally on the environment, Truss speaks out against green taxes on fuel bills when they are so high and says her proposed cuts are “affordable within our current Budget envelope”.
On small businesses, Truss says the party has not done enough to win back the support of entrepreneurs, farmers and the self-employed, blaming “Treasury orthodoxy” for making it harder to be self-employed.
“The fundamental principle for me is we have to be on the side of people who set up small businesses, people who are self-employed, people who go out to work every day. That is whose side we need to be on.”
Asked about the housing crisis, Truss says she wants to make it the case that when you are renting “for a number of years” this counts towards your mortgage eligibility.
She added: “In terms of housing supply overall, what I want to do is get rid of the top-down targets set by Whitehall and instead have different systems operating in different areas.”
On what she would do to repair “demeaning and damaging” mudslinging, Truss admits there have been “unfortunate occurrences during this leadership contest” and would have preferred fewer debates.
She said: “Frankly, it wasn’t a contest I wanted. Some of the things like the debates I wouldn’t necessarily have so many debates again.
“I think it’s better if we’re talking to each other within the Conservative party, rather than airing our dirty linen in public.”
Asked by an audience member with a severely autistic brother how she would fund social care if she cut National Insurance, Truss says she is still committed to the funding for the NHS and social care, adding: “I would pay for that out of general taxation.” She says her “priority” would be funding social care instead of the NHS because the facilities of the former are lacking.
Asked if she is “flaky” because of her changes from Liberal Democrat to Conservative and remainer to brexiter, Truss says she joined the Tory party when she was 21 and has been an activist since. “On the subject of the remain vote, yes I was unsure at the time, I was pretty much on the fence.
“I’ve always said that if we weren’t part of the European Union I wouldn’t want to join it. But I was concerned about some of the disruption. The fact is that disruption didn’t happen.
“And since the Brexit vote I’ve done more than most people in government to deliver on the opportunities of Brexit.
“Who on earth has the same views at 15 that they have at 55?”
Truss is asked if she would increase the portion of the UK government’s money which is given to Wales.
She doesn’t give a straight answer but says spending “automatically follows” from the Barnet formula, which is used to calculate how much money the devolved nations receive from the UK government.
But the foreign secretary does not say whether she would tweak the formula.
Asked if Nancy Pelosi should have gone to Taiwan, Truss says the US House Speaker is “well within her rights... to travel to Taiwan”.
She added: “The issue here is the language and the escalatory language that we’ve heard from China and I think that is irresponsible and I urge them to de-escalate.”
Truss believes the best way to tackle inflation is monetary policy including changes to the Bank of England’s mandate so it matches “some of the most effective central banks in the world at controlling inflation”.
“The last time the mandate was looked at was in 1997 under Gordon Brown.
“Things are very, very different now. What is simply wrong at this time is to be putting taxes up on ordinary people when they’re struggling to pay their fuel bills, they’re struggling to pay their food bills.
“Reducing a tax that was increased in April is not inflationary, it is helping people with their everyday costs.”
Liz Truss is now facing questions. Asked about the row over her public sector pay proposals, she responds: “What happened was we announced the policy, it was misinterpreted by the media.
“It was never intended to apply to doctors, nurses and teachers - so I wanted to clear the matter up straight away and I have been very clear we are now not going ahead with that policy.
“It wasn’t a central part of my policy platform and I’ve been clear that it is not happening.”
Asked about where the mooted £8.8bn savings will now come from, Truss says: “I’ve been very clear, this is not part of my central costings.”
Sunak ends his Q&A by saying he is the best person to “smash Keir Starmer” at the next election.
His questioner had pointed out that Sir Keir appears to be neck-and-neck with Sunak according to national polling but that Truss is consistently ahead of Sunak in polls of Tory members.
“Thank you - I think - for highlighting the stats,” the former chancellor replies.
Sunak insists he will be “bold enough” to scrap the onshore wind embargo in England where this is wanted by communities and the same will go for fracking.
Sunak is asked about the number of small boats crossing the Channel and to “be more specific and what it is you’re going to do and what’s going to be different”.
He replied with his 10-point plan and says the ECHR definition of a refugee “is far too broad and allows lefty lawyers to exploit it and frustrate our efforts, so I think we should move to the Refugee Convention which is another international legal standard but it is narrower and tighter and will give us a greater ability to say to people ‘you can’t stay’.”
He says at present Britain will give other countries aid and make trade agreements with them, but “neglects” to say ‘can you take back our failed asylum seekers?’
“I am prepared to do whatever it takes, legal changes as required, to get the Rwanda policy working, to get control of this situation...”
Asked about his proposals to reduce the size of the Cabinet Office and ending work-from-home, Sunak cited asking all departments to cut the number of civil servants as one of his last acts as chancellor.
He says the coalition government “deserves enormous credit for being tough on this and driving efficiencies. I’d like to carry on with that plan and get civil service numbers back to where they were five years ago. But how are we going to do that? We have to think boldly and differently about public services across the board.”
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