Liz Truss refuses to say whether benefits will rise in line with inflation
Good morning from the Conservative arty conference on the day the spotlight is falling on a fresh battle between Liz Truss and Tory rebels – this time over the level of benefits.
It’s only day after the government was forced into a humiliating U-turn on plans to abolish the top rate of income tax and the date of a new mini-budget.
This morning Truss is doing a broadcast round where he has refused to rule out real-terms benefit cuts to help pay for her government’s plans
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there is a need to be “fiscally responsible” amid suggestions benefits will not rise in line with inflation.
She said:
We are going to have to make decisions about how we bring down debt as a proportion of GDP in the medium term.
I am very committed to supporting the most vulnerable, in fact in addition to the energy price guarantee we’re also providing an extra £1,200 to the poorest households. So we have to look at these issues in the round, we have to be fiscally responsible.
Asked by the Today programme’s Nick Robinson about how she can guarantee that pensions will rise with inflation and not benefit payments, Truss replied the government is looking “at all of these issues very carefully” and an announcement “will be made in due course”.
But with Tory MPs plotting, the Guardian understands the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, will speed up plans for a new fiscal statement, expected to focus on spending and deregulation.
It will now take place later this month, rather than on 23 November as previously scheduled, accompanied by new forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility, in another move designed to restore market stability.
Senior MPs warned of further rebellions over reductions in public spending, especially on benefits, which the chancellor has declined to rule out.
You can reach me on Twitter at @BenQuinn75 if you would like to flag up any political developments that we should be taking stock of. Andrew Sparrow will be taking over later.
Key events
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Henry Dyer
Kwasi Kwarteng’s longest public appearance at the Conservative party conference will not be on the main stage, where he spoke for 20 minutes on Monday, but at a fringe event hosted by two thinktanks on Tuesday afternoon.
For an hour, the “person responsible for the UK’s economic future”, as the event bills it, will outline his vision in a conversation with the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). It will be longer than his 25-minute “mini-budget” speech and his “quarter of an hour – or maybe a bit longer” with party donors after the mini-budget.
Mark Littlewood, the director general of the IEA, will be one of Kwarteng’s interviewers, speaking to the man responsible for implementing “Trussonomics”.
The IEA has faced criticism over a lack of transparency over its donors, and a 2019 Guardian investigation found it had historically issued publications arguing climate change is either not significantly driven by human activity or will be positive.
Another charity has joined calls for reassurances that benefits will not face what effectively will be cuts if increases do not keep pace with inflation.
Brian Dow, the deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, said:
The chancellor yesterday pledged to always be on the side of those who need help the most, but this is contradicted by the prime minister’s failure to commit to uprating benefits in line with inflation – the bare minimum government could do to show it recognises the hardship faced by people bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis.
We’re growing ever more concerned that there is a lack of understanding at the heart of the debate about who is going to be impacted by this.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith has called for a further taper rate reduction and suggested the government should invest in universal credit.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Tory conference, the Conservative former leader and work and pensions secretary said he was “pleased” former chancellor Rishi Sunak lowered the taper rate, adding: “I think it should come lower in due course.”
He went on:
There’s not a better incentive than if we think for people as we have been arguing this week that lower taxes produce growth, then why would it be different for people on benefits?
If you have a lower withdrawal rate then they’re more likely to be proactive, more likely to get on, more likely to be able to be productive etc.
The Liberal Democrats have made calls for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to have their pay docked following their “gross mismanagement of the public finances”.
The party says it will table a censure motion in parliament calling for action against the prime minister and the chancellor.
Truss would lose £40,000 and Kwarteng £33,750 under the proposal, the Lib Dems add.
The motion states:
That this house censures the chancellor of the exchequer and the prime minister, for their handling of the UK’s public finances, which has dramatically increased households’ mortgage costs and threatened pension funds; and believes the government should halve the chancellor’s additional ministerial salary, and halve the prime minister’s additional salary this year, as a result of this gross mismanagement of the public finances.
Away from the Tory Party conference, the chair of the Covid-19 public inquiry has said that bereaved families and those who suffered will be at the heart of its inquiries, as she promised to be “fair” and “thorough”.
Former court of appeal judge Lady Heather Hallett opened the inquiry in London saying she planned to investigate the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic, the government’s response, and its impact on patients, NHS and social care staff and the public.
A minute’s silence was held for those who lost their lives, with Hallett saying:
There’s one word that sums up the pandemic for so many, and that is the word ‘loss’.
Although there were positive aspects of the pandemic, for example, the way in which communities banded together to help each other and the vulnerable, millions of people suffered loss, including the loss of friends and family members; the loss of good health – both mental and physical; economic loss; the loss of educational opportunities and the loss of social interaction.
Those who are bereaved lost the most. They lost loved ones and the ability to mourn properly.
Hallett said the inquiry would analyse how the Covid pandemic unfolded and would determine whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better”.
Referring to the controversy surrounding Partygate, a member of the audience at a Tory conference fringe event on rebuilding trust after the Johnson era has claimed that a “drinking culture” within the civil service was at fault and needed to be cleaned up.
Responding to him, Dave Penman of the FDA union said:
I was a civil servant and while I was in the civil service over 20 years ago alcohol was banned in most departments. I think what we saw in Partygate was an issue about No 10, not the civil service.
Jeremy Wright, a Tory MP and former minister, backs him up:
Every trade has some people who drink too much to cope with the pressure. There are frankly some politicians who drink too much and that includes ministers. Not while they are making decisions but after they have made decisions.
The same event was told that trust among the public towards government was at a level that was last seen in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
“The Blair years were a really good example of people saying: well they are not going to be any different,” said Dr Susan Hawley of Spotlight on Corruption, who also warned that polling had shown some very authoritarian instincts and reactions from the public in the wake of the decline in trust.
Challenged over whether borrowing to buy years’ worth of gas at almost record-high prices is a good deal, Truss has told broadcasters in Birmingham:
I have not signed any deal. But what I’m saying is that Britain’s energy security is vital and what we will be doing is always looking for value for money, of course we will, but it’s important that we have that long-term energy security.
Asked if the markets will be happier with more borrowing, Truss said:
This is speculation, you know, no deal has been signed. But as I’m very clear about, we are completely focused on fiscal discipline.
We will be bringing down the debt as a proportion of GDP over the medium term, but making sure we’ve got energy security is clearly vital for our country.
Civil servants are tired of ministers saying one thing in private about the work of civil servants and then “denigrating” them in public, a fringe event on rebuilding trust after the Johnson era has been told by the head of a union which represents senior civil servants.
Two things could be done that would help rebuild trust among civil servants, said Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union
That is: stop attacking them and introduce the sort of independent and transparent process that the committee for standards in public life have talked about and which has been introduced elsewhere.
Penman also recalled the reports that Downing Street at the time of Boris Johnson’s premiership had a “hit list” of permanent secretaries it would like to replace.
Something that had come up “time and time again” was the conduct of some ministers in the workplace, said Penman, instancing Jacob Rees-Mogg’s post-it notes on the desks of civil servants who were working at home or were not in the office due to other duties at that time.
Rees-Mogg was called “condescending” earlier this year after leaving notes deemed to be passive-aggressive on civil servants’ desks in an effort to stop them working from home.
As part of his campaign to push workers back into offices, the cabinet minister has toured Whitehall buildings and published a league table of government departments based on how many staff are present.
Referring also to the most serious of allegations about the behaviour of ministers and MPs, he added:
As we saw in the scandal that erupted around Westminster around the MeToo movement there are times when politicians’ conduct falls below that which is acceptable in any workplace but they are not employees and it is a process essentially of self-regulation.
Liz Truss has said that the government is looking at long-term energy contracts with other countries to secure supply.
Asked if she is contemplating buying many years’ worth of Norwegian gas at close to current prices, she told broadcasters in Birmingham:
What I have said is, first of all, we will move forward on our own energy security, so that’s more renewables here in the UK, it’s more nuclear power here in the UK, and it’s also moving forward faster with using North Sea facilities.
But we are looking at long-term energy contracts with other countries because as well as making sure we’ve got a good price, energy security is vitally important.
And we never want to be in a position again where we’re dependent on authoritarian regimes for our energy. That’s why we’re in the situation we are now.
Jeremy White, a Tory MP on the panel here at the Tory conference discussion on rebuilding trust after ‘the Johnson era’, says that he “fervently hopes” that the new prime minister will appoint a new ethics advisor.
Wright, the Conservative member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, says however that the process of appointment needs to be regulated
“Not that the PM cannot choose who they want but that there should be methods to reassure people,” he sys.
The advisor should also be able to initiate their own investigations and determine if there has been a breach in the ministerial code.
A reminder that Liz Truss refused to commit during the leadership to appointing an ethics adviser if she became prime minister, saying she has “always acted with integrity”.
I think we’re going to hear some interesting contributions at this fringe during questions from the floor and when others on the panel come in.
They include Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants.
It may feel like an age ago, but it was only in June of this year that Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor, Lord Geidt, dramatically quit after conceding the then prime minister may have broken the ministerial code over the Partygate scandal.
Tory party activists, councillors and others have packed out a fringe event, where I’m now liveblogging from, on the topic of: “How can government rebuild trust after the Johnson era.”
Dr Hannah White, acting director of the Institute for government, starts by reminding those present that the Johnson government was marked by a series of ethical scandals, which ultimately led to its downfall.
Jessica Elgot
Liz Truss has refused to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation, amid a fresh battle with MPs over cuts to spending including concern from among her cabinet.
The prime minister said pensions would rise in line with inflation, having committed to the pensions “triple lock” during the leadership campaign. But she said people on welfare benefits were in a “different situation” and said they were more able to look for more work.
“When people are on a fixed income, when they are pensioners, it is quite hard to adjust. I think it’s a different situation for people who are in the position to be able to work,” she told LBC. “What I want to do is make sure that we are helping more people into work.”
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ministers were “going to have to make decisions about how we bring down debt as a proportion of GDP in the medium term … I am very committed to supporting the most vulnerable.”
A real-terms cut to benefits would be a direct cut to support for dying people, an end of life charity has said in response to the prime minister’s comments this morning on whether or not the government will increase benefits in line with inflation.
Dr Sam Royston, director of policy and research at the end of life charity Marie Curie, said:
90,000 people die in poverty each year in the UK. And terminally ill people of working age are at particular risk. For many terminally ill people, a cut in support midst of a cost-of-living crisis would effectively remove any quality of life they hoped to have in their final weeks.
Lord Frost laughed when he was asked about the apology offered by arch Brexiter Steve Baker to Ireland and Brussels for the way that the MP and some of his colleagues behaved over the past six years.
In fact, claimed Frost, the UK had been “the victim of poor behaviour from the EU in Ireland”.
Steve has his own way of these things. An honest assessment is that things could have been done differently on both sides. I think the UK has been the victim of poor behaviour from the EU in Ireland and there are things on reflection that we would have done differently.
I don’t think it helps to rake over things the whole time and the important thing is to try and find an agreement if they possibly can.
Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, has said that he worries that a “weak start” is going to “discredit the agenda” of the Truss government.
He was speaking this morning on LBC, where he was asked about the prospect that backbenchers could force future U-turns from the government.
Well this is the problem now. I worry that this rather weak start is going to discredit the whole agenda, that every time we try and do anything that there is going to be a coalition against this.
I think the only way to deal with that is to pause, explain and set out what needs to be done in a more thoughtful way.
Former Conservative leader William Hague said that he hoped the government could learn from the U-turn on income tax and the political chaos of recent days.
He told Times Radio: Maybe the government are beginning to learn, after a very terrible start, that they do have to look ahead and anticipate these problems.”
Unlike some other party members, Lord Hague did not suggest that defeat at the next election was inevitable for the government.
The whole political situation in this country is very fluid. And if I was the Labour party, I would not be confident I’ve got people excited yet about what a Labour government could do. There is still a lot to play for.
But he said that Liz Truss’ team needs to learn the “right lessons” from the mini-budget debacle.
They can either look at what’s happened over the 45p tax rate and say: ‘Oh, we had to give way on that so we’ve got to be adamant about everything else that we first thought otherwise we’re going to look weak’, but that would be a disastrous approach. Or they can say: ‘Well, maybe we should now really look ahead and not dig any more holes an climb into them and let’s be careful now’ and they really need to take that approach on a whole range of subjects because we’re coming into a very difficult period as a country and in the whole world anyway.
Rajeev Syal
Ahead of her speech today to the Conservative party conference, the home secretary has said she would examine the possibility of giving anonymity to suspected criminals after concern over the identification and treatment of high-profile people wrongly accused of sexual abuse.
Suella Braverman made the pledge after criticising the “media circus” surrounding accusations against the singer Cliff Richard and the former MP Harvey Proctor, which both said had ruined their lives.
Braverman told a Young Conservatives audience at the party conference in Birmingham that “trial by media will only undermine our justice system”.
Asked about the treatment of Richard and Proctor, both of whom were cleared of any wrongdoing after facing high-profile claims, she said:
We have had some high-profile instances where the media circus around a suspect who has not been charged has been devastating. I think coverage of people prior to charge can be very, very damaging, particularly if the charges are not pursued or if they are dropped later on.
Joanna Partridge
Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to bring forward his debt-cutting plan could help to calm markets and mean smaller future interest rate rises than would otherwise have been the case, according to the Tory chair of parliament’s influential Treasury watchdog.
Mel Stride, a Conservative MP and the chair of the Treasury committee, said moving the government’s fiscal statement to October from 23 November, could restore some confidence, depending on the content of the plan and the detail of the new forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility.
The pound rose to a two-week high above $1.14 on Tuesday as Kwarteng prepared to announce an earlier date to set out his plans to cut debts. Stride said that if the plans were well received, the Bank of England might opt for a smaller rate rise at its next meeting on 3 November.
