Truss will ‘rush through’ her tax cuts to tackle cost of living crisis

LIZ TRUSS will rush through tax cuts up to six months earlier than planned, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose, as the Foreign Secretary pledged to “look at what more can be done” to tackle the rising cost of living.

Until now, Ms Truss had been planning to reverse the National Insurance rise from April – in line with usual Treasury rules – after announcing the move in an emergency Budget in September.

But the leadership contender’s team have now established she can scrap the increase immediately, meaning the change can be implemented within days of the Budget, putting more money in people’s pay packets from November.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss confirms she would use the Budget to “immediately tackle the cost of living crisis by cutting taxes, reversing the rise on National Insurance and suspending the green levy on energy bills.” A campaign source added: “Based on the advice we have had, we are now confident we can immediately do the tax cut.”

Yesterday, Rishi Sunak, Ms Truss’s leadership rival, claimed the Foreign Secretary had “ruled out” further “direct support” to households in the autumn, based on an interview in which she said she favoured “lowering the tax burden” over “giving out handouts”.

He added: “I announced significant support as chancellor worth up to £1,200 for people and I want to go further as prime minister because the situation is going to be different.”

But, Ms Truss hinted at the possibility of further one-off support for households in the autumn, if she becomes prime minister.

She said: “I will look at what more can be done but the way I would do things is in a Conservative way. We would put more money back in the pockets of hard-working people without delay. That is necessary, affordable and the right thing to do at a time when we face the highest tax burden in 70 years.”

Ms Truss’s intervention comes amid growing pressure on the Foreign Secretary and Mr Sunak, her leadership rival, to set out plans to help households cope with soaring costs. Yesterday, analysts at Auxilione, an energy consultancy, predicted the price cap on bills could reach £3,687 in October – close to double today’s levels – and £4,400 in January.

A poll by Public First for this newspaper found that more than two in five people believe the Government is not taking the cost of living crisis seriously – while almost two thirds of the public are struggling to pay energy bills. According to the survey of 2,011 adults, more than half (55 per cent) agreed the Government could do more to tackle the effect of rising costs but was choosing not to.

Writing in this newspaper, Ms Truss

also suggests that the current levels of inflation were “exacerbated” by the Bank of England, as she pledges to “work night and day to tackle inflation”.

She said: “The spike in inflation was caused by a global supply shock, but it was exacerbated by monetary policy.

The Bank of England’s mandate was last set in 1997 under Gordon Brown in very different economic circumstances.

“I fully support its independence but its mandate cannot be bound by the same Brownian consensus 25 years on.

“That is why I want to look around the world at what the best performing central banks are doing to control inflation and how we can ensure our Bank is delivering what we need it to deliver.

“In these turbulent times, we need to unite to see our economy and country through to better days.

“I am ready to work night and day to tackle inflation, get growth going and deliver on our promises to the British people, including the readers of The Sunday Telegraph.”

Yesterday, Mr Sunak said it was “simply wrong to rule out further direct support at this time as Liz Truss has done and what’s more her tax proposals are not going to help very significantly, people like pensioners or those on low incomes who are exactly the kind of families that are going to need help”.

Asked what further help was needed, the former chancellor said: “Well, we need to have certainty about exactly what bills are going to be in the autumn but people can look at my track record.”

Mr Sunak’s team has calculated that scrapping the National Insurance increase would result in £186 being retained by a household in which two people each earning £20,000 – contrasting the saving with estimates of the energy price cap reaching record levels next year.