Truss promises immediate help with energy bills
Liz Truss has promised to provide immediate help with soaring energy bills if she is made Prime Minister in the coming days.
The leadership favourite, who is expected to be announced as Tory party leader and Prime Minister tomorrow, said today that “we face serious, serious challenges which will take immediate action from the government”.
She also wrote in the Telegraph that a plan would be announced in her first week of office and a formal “fiscal event” will be outlined later this month.
Truss ruled out “hand outs” to Brits facing near three-fold increases in energy bills earlier in the campaign, however she has since backtracked on this position.
It is expected she will deliver direct cash grants to households, along with her plans to cut taxes by £30bn+.
She told the BBC: “I understand that people are struggling with eye watering energy bills and there are predictions of even worse down the track.
“I understand that and I can say that I will act if elected as Prime Minister, I will act immediately on bills and on energy supply. I think those two things go hand in hand.
“We need to help people, we need to help businesses, but we also need to sort out the supply issues that have made us end up being where we are right now.”
She added: “As well as lowering taxes, my first port of call will be sorting out supply because at the moment we’re still not doing enough to use our resources in the North Sea. We need to move ahead faster with nuclear, we need to find more reliable sources of supply.”
Truss is planning on reversing this year’s 1.25 percentage point National Insurance increase and cancelling a planned Corporation Tax hike for the UK’s most profitable businesses.
Her leadership opponent Rishi Sunak said these measures will be inflationary and will not help the most vulnerable during the cost of living crisis as they already pay little or no tax.
Defending her tax cuts, Truss said: “The economic debate for the past 20 years has been dominated by discussions about distribution, what’s happened is we have had relatively low growth. We’ve had no more than an average of 1 per cent growth and that has been holding our country back.
“We promised in our manifesto that we would not raise National Insurance, I opposed the decision in cabinet because it was the wrong decision. That was a deicison we said we wouldn’t do in the manfiesto, I will reverse that decision.”