Liz Truss has made it clear that she would do more to assist suffering families and companies so they can survive the cost-of-living crisis.
The front-runner for the Tory leadership said that she would look at the issue “across the board” in response to calls to go beyond her pledged tax cuts.
Rishi Sunak, a competitor of hers, said yesterday night that if she does not pick between tax cuts and assistance, she runs the danger of sending the economy into a “inflation spiral.”
Miss Truss has now proposed providing extra assistance to homeowners and small businesses affected by rising energy costs.
The Foreign Secretary said in a statement to The Sun on Sunday that she would not “reach first for the giveaway” before investigating the reasons behind skyrocketing energy costs.
What I truly disagree to, she said, is collecting money from people in taxes and then giving it to them in benefits. I don’t get it at all. Therefore, I am in favour of lowering taxes, kicking-starting and expanding our economy, and addressing supply-side challenges.
“I’m very, very conscious that small companies are also having issues with energy prices, not simply customers, or consumers.”
She continued by saying that she is considering assistance “across the board” and that every government “needs to look at making sure life is affordable for people.”
The former head of Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit and current front-runner for a cabinet position under Miss Truss, Sir John Redwood, said that she would consider a “spectrum of help for individuals who don’t pay tax.”
According to what he read in their statements, he stated to the Daily Mail, “I think the Liz team 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.”
As energy prices rise this winter, Miss Truss’ close friend and business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who is expected to become her chancellor, promised that more help will be provided.
He said in the Mail on Sunday that “no nation is immune from increasing costs, least of all Britain.”
“I see the profound concern this is inflicting. Millions of families will be worrying about how they will survive as winter draws near. However, I want to reassure the British people that assistance is on the way. However, Mr. Sunak, an ex-chancellor, said that Miss Truss had committed to more than £50 billion in unfunded, long-term tax cuts.
The truth is that Truss cannot simultaneously implement an assistance package and £50 billion in unfunded, permanent tax cuts, according to a Sunak campaign spokeswoman. By doing so, borrowing would reach historically high and risky levels, seriously jeopardising the state finances and sending the economy into an inflationary cycle.
It comes before Ofgem’s announcement on Friday, when the regulator is anticipated to increase the maximum allowed for energy bills from £1,971 to £3,500.
The team of Mr. Sunak has also seized on rumours that Miss Truss would not request a prediction from the impartial Office for Budget Responsibility prior to the emergency budget she is preparing for next month.
The spokesperson said: “It makes sense why they would want to prevent independent examination of the OBR in their emergency budget; they know you can’t do both, and it’s time they talked straight about that now.”
Michael Gove, a former cabinet member, criticised Miss Truss’s economic ideas while endorsing Mr. Sunak. She was on a “vacation from reality,” he said in a piece for The Times, with her promises for tax cuts amid a crisis in the cost of living.
Mr. Gove, who held the position of leveling-up secretary until Boris Johnson fired him just before he resigned as Tory leader, said Miss Truss’s plan places the nation’s poorest people below the stock options of FTSE 100 CEOs.
The assertions made by Mr. Sunak, however, that he would restore to “traditional Conservative economic beliefs,” according to Miss Truss, would cause Britain to enter a recession.
In addition to putting a one-year freeze on the green energy charge, she has committed to roll back his hike in the company tax.