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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Transport minister refuses to say if government still committed to extending HS2 to Manchester and Euston – as it happened

Liz Truss United Kingdom Rupert Harrison George Osborne CEBR ​​Rishi Sunak OBR
An artist’s impression of an early visualisation of an HS2 train.
An artist’s impression of an early visualisation of an HS2 train. Photograph: HS2/PA

Experts says Starmer won't be able to get 'much better' Brexit deal with EU while UK remains outside single market

EU policy experts are sceptical of the significance of Keir Starmer’s declaration that he wants to get a “much better” Brexit deal with the EU.

Wolfgang Münchau, director of Eurointelligence, a news service providing news and analysis relating to the EU, has written a blog saying a better deal is not available. He says:

Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir’s repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal. The two big remaining issues at the time have since been resolved: Northern Ireland and Britain’s associate membership of the EU Horizon’s science programme. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.

On X/Twitter Münchau has called Starmer’s declaration “silly”.

John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform thinktank, also thinks that Starmer would find it hard to negotiate changes that would make a big difference. He posted a message on X/Twitter saying:

More cakism? Bolt-ons to the FTA with the EU isn’t going to make much difference to the economy.

And Springford told the Evening Standard:

Some bolt-ons to the EU-UK trade deal would help some sectors, like agriculture.

But they wouldn’t change the problem: a free trade agreement is much less effective than a single market and customs union. Starmer says he wants a closer EU relationship to improve growth, but his red lines on the EU make it very hard to achieve that.

Rem Korteweg, a fellow at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch international relations thinktank, says a major rewrite of the deal is unlikely.

“Major rewrite” doing a lot of work here

A vet agreement & prof qualifications recognition won’t lead to fundamental changes in EU-UK trading

But I guess Starmer could sell it as a “closer” relationship

(I wonder what he will offer EU in return tho)

John O’Brennan, professor of European integration at Maynooth University in Ireland, also think Starmer is being cakeist.

The British elite delusions about the relationship with the EU go far beyond the Conservative Party.

Keir Starmer is advocating another kind of cakeism while in fact he is locking the U.K. into a Swiss type relationship with the EU which is completely asymmetric. Baffling.

Mujtaba Rahman, the Brexit expert at the Eurasia Group, says Starmer will have to renegotiate the deal.

Of course @UKLabour @Keir_Starmer will have to fix the Brexit deal

Frost was totally out of his depth, and negotiated a shite deal that has totally shafted large parts of the UK economy

That was never going to be a sustainable equilibrium

But Anand Menon, who runs UK in a Changing Europe, an academic thinktank, thinks that Britain will find it hard to secure big improvements while it remains outside the single market.

A veterinary agreement is not going to ‘fix’ the economic impact of Johnson’s Brexit deal. The point about Starmer is that he has decided being outside the Single Market should be the new equilibrium.

Updated

An annual national day of reflection should be held and schoolchildren must be taught about people’s experiences in the pandemic, the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration has proposed. These are among 10 recommendations it has made in a report to the government. Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said the “valuable recommendations” would be considered by government.

Updated

Police aren't paid 'to dance with drag queens', Braverman tells MPs

During Home Office questions Suella Braverman also restated her opposition to the police being involved in what she sees as “political activism”. In response to a question from the Conservative MP, the home secretary said:

We pay the police to fight crime, whether that’s a focus on antisocial behaviour, the nuisance bikers or burglaries. They are there to keep people safe. We do not pay them to wave flags at parades, to dance with drag queens or to campaign.

That’s why I finally ended all association with Stonewall at the Home Office and why I expect all PCCs [police and crime commissioners] and chief constables to focus on cutting crime and rebuilding confidence, not playing politics.

Updated

Lisa Nandy has been tweeting from New York, where she is representing Labour at the United Nations general assembly in her new job as shadow cabinet minister for international development.

Updated

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, told MPs in the Commons earlier that there was a “strong case” to be made for China to be added to the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme when it gets introduced.

The scheme is being set up under the National Security Act and it will ensure that people trying to exert political influence on behalf of a foreign power have to be registered. The enhanced tier will be for countries that pose a greater risk.

Asked whether China would be in this tier, Braverman said:

I will not shy away from calling out threats from China for what they are and make it clear that their agencies regularly engage in hostile activity towards the UK.

We are currently reviewing the countries that should go on to the enhanced tier of Firs.

I think there is a strong case to be made for China being put into that, but I won’t … I don’t want to prejudice the process by which those determinations will be made.

This is almost exactly the same answer that Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM gave, when asked about this in the Commons last week.

Updated

Liz Truss has posted the full text of her speech this morning on her website.

Defra to limit scope for individual dogs to be exempt from Dangerous Dogs Act as American XL bully ban comes in

Lord Benyon, a minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, says the government wants to limit the number of people able to keep dogs banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act subject to certain conditions.

He made the comment in a written ministerial statement about the government plan, first announced on Friday, to make American XL bully dogs illegal under the legislation. He said:

While the courts have the power to allow people to keep banned breeds with certain conditions, like being muzzled and neutered, the number of so-called exempted dogs is higher than a decade ago. That was not the intention of the legislation passed over 30 years ago. Therefore, we will also review our guidance to enforcers of the law.

Benyon also said that, for XL bullies to be banned, they would have to be defined first. Explaining the process, he said:

Under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, a definition of the ‘American XL Bully’ breed type needs to be specified in order to impose a ban. The environment secretary and the home secretary will convene experts to define the ‘American XL bully’ breed type. This group will include police, canine and veterinary experts, and animal welfare stakeholders. This is a vital first step towards adding it to the list of dogs banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act. We will engage with the relevant devolved administrations about adopting a UK-wide approach.

The government will then legislate to add it to the list of dogs banned under the Act. I intend to have the legislation in place to deliver this ban by the end of the year. This will make it an offence to own an unregistered XL bully, or to breed, gift or sell one. We need to safely manage the existing population of these dogs, therefore there will be a transition period. Further details on how this period will work will be provided ahead of the tabling of the legislation later this year. Dog owners do not need to take any action at this stage.

Updated

Transport minister refuses to say government still committed to extending HS2 to Manchester, and to Euston

Graham Stringer (Lab) asks Holden if he could confirm that the government remains committed to taking HS2 to Manchester, and building the line all the way to Euston, and not just stopping at Old Oak Common.

Holden refuses to answer. He just says ministers will keep the Commons updated.

In a story in the Times on Saturday Oliver Wright said Rishi Sunak has decided to give up the phase two line to Manchester and the Euston link. Wright said:

A senior government source claimed Rishi Sunak had “made up his mind” to scrap both the Manchester HS2 link and the line running into Euston.

Instead, the prime minister would pledge to prioritise so-called Northern Powerhouse Rail with the potential to use savings to upgrade the project so that a new high-speed rail link would run from Liverpool to Leeds.

“Unless he can be persuaded to change course it is a done deal,” the source said, although they added that the rump of HS2 would mean the government had spent most of the money but with almost none of the benefit. “Ending the line at Old Oak Common is pretty much the definition of a railway to nowhere.”

UPDATE: Stringer asked:

Will the minister give an unambiguous answer to the question: is this Government still committed to building HS2 to Manchester from Euston?

Because people in the north need to know whether or not they are being abandoned because it looks like that to me from the press reports.

And Holden replied:

There’s no question of this government abandoning the north … This government is hugely investing in the north of England, whether it’s on rail or road or indeed on our important bus network.

Ministers will continue to update the House regularly on HS2 as we have done throughout.

Updated

Iain Stewart (Con), chair of the Commons transport committee, says that if it is true that the government is going to scrap phase two of HS2, that would be a false economy. He says Holden should pass this message on to the Treasury: “Either do it properly or don’t do it at all.”

Holden says he will pass that on.

Holden is replying to Haigh.

He says Pat McFadden the shadow minister told the BBC yesterday that Labour was not committed to phase two of HS2. You cannot trust what Labour is saying on anything, he says.

By now he is not talking about HS2 at all ….

Updated

Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, says Mark Harper, the transport secretary, should have replied.

She says reports suggest the link to Manchester looks as if it will not go ahead.

And, with reports that it might terminate at Old Oak Common in Acton, London, instead of Euston, the trip from central London to Birmingham could end up taking longer with HS2 than it currently does.

UPDATE: Haigh said:

Here we are yet again. 13 years of gross mismanagement and chaos coming home to roost. First they slashed Northern Powerhouse Rail, then they binned HS2 to Leeds, then they announced the line would terminate at Old Oak Common for years to come, and now it looks like they are considering cutting the North of England out in its entirety.

If this is true, what are we left with? The Tories’ flagship levelling up project that reaches neither the north of England nor central London. The most expensive railway track in the world that thanks to terminating in Acton will be a longer journey between Birmingham and Central London than the one passengers currently enjoy.

What started out as a modern infrastructure plan left by the last Labour government, linking our largest northern cities, after 13 years of Tory incompetence, waste and broken promises will have turned into a humiliating Conservative failure. A great rail betrayal.

Updated

In the Commons Richard Holden, a transport minister, is responding to an urgent question from Labour about HS2.

He says work is already under way on the London to Birmingham phase, which is due to be ready by 2033.

There are six-monthly progress reports provided to the Commons, he says.

Updated

Union leader saying teachers in England working to rule as part of campaign against excessive workload

Members of the NASUWT union are taking industrial action short of a strike from today, which means teachers at up to 10,000 schools across England will be working to rule.

The NASUWT, alongside other education unions, accepted the government’s offer of a 6.5% pay rise in July, but pledged to pursue its campaign for real-terms improvements to pay and action over excessive workload following ballots for strike action last term.

NASUWT members have been told by their union to limit their working time to agreed hours, which means they will teach as normal, but will not undertake extracurricular activities or cover midday supervision of pupils.

They have also been instructed not to cover for absence, work during lunch breaks, work over weekends or take part in mock inspections in preparation for a visit by the schools inspectorate in England, Ofsted.

The NASUWT general secretary, Patrick Roach, said:

We can no longer allow teachers to be overworked and exhausted by the demands of the job. Our action will ensure that teachers and headteachers can focus their time on teaching and learning whilst bringing immediate downward pressure on workload and working hours.

The industrial action began as the government announced members of its new workload reduction taskforce, which was promised alongside the pay deal, and has been set up with the aim of cutting the working week of teachers by five hours over the next three years.

Updated

And here are some more comments from journalists and commentators on the Liz Truss speech.

From Faisal Islam, the BBC’s economics editor

From my colleague John Crace

From my colleague Richard Partington

From Tim Montgomerie, the founder of the ConservativeHome website

From the Independent’s John Rentoul

Dehenna Davison resigns as levelling up minister due to chronic migraine problem

Dehenna Davison has resigned as a levelling up minister saying she cannot carry on because she has been battling with chronic migraine. In an open letter to the prime minister, she says:

Some days I’m fine, but on others it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the demands of ministerial life – and the timing of such days is never predictable. Though I have tried to mitigate, and am grateful to colleagues for their patience at times, I don’t feel it is right to continue in the role.

At such a critical time for levelling up, I believe the people of communities like mine, and across the country, deserve a minister who can give the job the energy it needs. I regret that I no longer can.

And, as my capacity is currently diminished, it feels right to focus it on my constituents, and on promoting conservatism from the backbenches.

Davison, who was only elected in 2019 and who is only 30, has already announced she will stand down at the next election.

Jacob Young has been appointed to replace her as levelling up minister. He was previously a government whip. And Gagan Mohindra has been appointed a whip to replace Young.

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, posted a message on X/Twitter saying Davison had been a brilliant minister.

Really sorry to lose Dehenna from the department - a brilliant minister and kind friend. Wishing her all the very best for the future. She has so much to offer

OBR says it wasn't to blame for 'leak' that Truss says ruined her mini-budget - but was Guardian responsible instead?

In her speech this morning Liz Truss implied that it was a leak from the Office for Budget Responsibility that torpedoed her mini-budget – or at least part of it. She said:

By October 7 the OBR were already leaking their calculations that there was a £70bn hole in the budget – these numbers of course subsequently proved to be wrong – but that leak would have made delivery of the corporation tax freeze untenable.

She made the same point in the Q&A, claiming this showed how much power the OBR was exercising as an unelected body. (See 11.19am.)

The OBR has now issued a statement saying Truss was wrong. A spokesperson said:

The former prime minister’s statement is incorrect. We provided our advice on the economic and fiscal implications of the growth plan (the so-called ‘mini-budget’) exclusively to the chancellor and Treasury on Friday 7 October 2022. A full timetable of our interactions with the government over the autumn of 2022 is published in the foreword to the November 2022 Economic and fiscal outlook.

But was there a “leak” anyway? I am particularly intrigued because, as far as I can tell, we were the only news organisation reporting that the OBR might have discovered a £70bn black hole in the mini-budget, and it was in a story I wrote. And the figure wasn’t a leak of official information; it was an estimate, based on economic trends, provided on the record by Sir Charlie Bean, a former member of the OBR, as his best guess as to what his old colleagues might be telling the Treasury confidentially. It was a decent scoop – but not a leak.

So if this is what Truss thinks brought her down, it wasn’t the OBR – it was the Guardian wot did it.

Updated

No 10 insists Sunak 'committed to growth' after Truss gives speech arguing government's economic policy flawed

Here are the main lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning.

  • The PM’s spokesperson rejected suggestions from Liz Truss that Rishi Sunak is anti-growth. In her speech this morning Truss implied that she viewed the PM as the “anti-growth coalition” who support statist economic policies “fashionable on the London dinner party circuit”, but she did not criticise him personally. Asked about the speech, the spokesperson said Sunak had not watched it. Asked if Sunak was anti-growth, the spokesperson said: “Both the chancellor and the prime minister are committed to growth.”

  • The spokesperson said Sunak did not support Keir Starmer’s proposal for a renegotiation of the post-Brexit trade deal with the EU. Asked if Sunak favoured a renegotiation, the spokesperson said “No”. He went on:

We expect the TCA [trade and co-operation agreement] to remain the basis of our relationship with the EU and are focused on maximising the opportunities it presents us with.

Asked if the government thought the deal could be improved, the spokesperson replied:

We are focused, as I say, on taking the TCA and using our Brexit freedoms to the benefit of the public already. We’re not looking to relitigate the past or reopen it in any way, shape or form.

Obviously there is a set statutory review period but beyond that we’re very much focused on maximising the opportunities it presents for the public.

  • The spokesperson said the strikes by consultants and junior hospital doctors in England later this week would pose “a huge challenge for the NHS and for patients, who will see their care significantly disrupted”.

Updated

Up to 8 million people - especially private renters and the young - not properly registered to vote, says Electoral Commission

Up to 8 million people could be denied their right to vote thanks to an “outdated registration system”, the Electoral Commission has said. As PA Media reports, the commission called for “urgent reforms” to electoral registration rules as it published research showing the number of people either incorrectly registered or missing from the electoral roll completely. PA says:

The figure is more than the combined adult populations of Scotland and Wales and includes disproportionate numbers of young people and private renters.

Only two-thirds of private renters in Britain are registered at their current address, while the proportion of renters in Scotland included on the register has fallen from 49% in 2018 to 45% last year.

Homeowners were much more likely to be correctly registered, with 88% of mortgage-holders and 95% of owner-occupiers appearing on the register at their correct address.

Pensioners were much more likely to be correctly registered than anyone else, with 96% included on the register compared with 60% of those aged 18-19 and 67% of those aged 20-24.

There were also wide ethnic disparities, with 87% of white people correctly registered compared with 80% of Asian people and 72% of black people. The proportion of black people correctly registered has fallen from 75% in 2018.

Craig Westwood, the Electoral Commission’s director of communications, policy and research, said: “Millions of people across the UK are not correctly registered to vote. While some may not want to participate in elections, for many people it is a consequence of an outdated registration system that disproportionally affects private renters and young people.

Without action, we’ll continue to see large numbers of people unable to take part in elections. The electoral community needs a clear plan to ensure that electoral registration processes are modernised so that people are registered and able to exercise their right to vote. As part of this plan, governments will need to pass legislation to enable data to be shared with electoral administrators.”

Changes proposed by the Electoral Commission would allow government departments and public bodies to share data on potentially eligible voters with electoral administrators, allowing them to register voters directly or send voters invitations to register.

The commission said this would not only improve the experience for voters, but would also reduce the burden faced by electoral administrators who currently receive high numbers of applications to register in the run-up to major elections.

This chart, from the report published by the commission, shows how figures for the completeness of the electoral register have changed since the 1950s. Completeness means the proportion of people entitled to be on the electoral register who are actually registered, and at the right address.

Figures for completeness of electoral register
Figures for completeness of electoral register Photograph: Electoral Commission

The polling expert Peter Kellner argued in a recent blog that, because people not registered to vote are more likely to live in Labour constituencies, and because the UK draws up constituency boundaries on the basis of the number of registered votes, not on the basis of population (as many other advanced democracies do), non-registration creates a bias towards the Conservatives.

Updated

In the Commons there will be an urgent question on HS2 at 3.30pm, followed by ministerial statements on the Tata Steel bailout and Post Office compensation.

Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson, has criticised Liz Truss for failing to apologise to the public for the impact of her mini-budget in her speech today. And she said Truss should never have received a ministerial pay-off after she resigned. Olney said:

Liz Truss’ refusal to apologise to the families who have seen their finances ruined by her botched budget shows just how out of touch she is. To rub salt in the wound, Truss and her fellow Conservative ministers pocketed thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash in handouts after causing an economic car crash and fleeing the scene of the crime.

The British public will never forget this shambolic Conservative government for trashing the economy and sending mortgage rates spiralling. It is time to change the rules over ministerial severance pay for good so that Liz Truss and other former Conservative ministers cannot again profit from their own failure.

Updated

Welsh government announces plan to increase size of Senedd, with new proportional voting system

The Welsh government has revealed what it calls “once-in-a-generation” proposed reforms to the Senedd – the Welsh parliament.

If Senedd members support the changes outlined in the Senedd reform bill, they will be in place for the 2026 Senedd elections.

Proposed changes include:

  • An increase in the number of members from 60 to 96 members.

  • The current voting system, under which 40 members are elected under the first-past-the-post system, to be scrapped. Members would be elected using closed proportional lists. The seats would be allocated to parties using the D’Hondt formula.

  • The 32 new UK parliament constituencies to be paired to create 16 Senedd constituencies for the 2026 Senedd election. Each constituency to elect six members.

  • A full boundary review to take place after 2026 in time for the 2030 election.

  • Senedd elections to be held every four years from 2026 onwards rather than five.

  • An increase in the maximum number of Welsh ministers from 12 to 17 (plus the first minister and the counsel general).

  • All candidates for future Senedd elections must live in Wales.

  • A separate bill to introduce gender quotas for candidates for election to the Senedd is to be brought forward later in the year.

The Welsh counsel general, Mick Antoniw, said of the proposed changes to the Welsh parliament:

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a modern Senedd, which truly reflects Wales, and to strengthen our democracy.

We are creating a more effective Senedd, with a greater ability and capacity to hold the Welsh government to account. This bill will help ensure the Senedd also reflects the huge changes to Wales’ devolution settlement since 1999, including law-making and tax-raising powers.

Wales is the most under-represented country in the UK – the Senedd has the least members of any devolved parliament in the country and the recent reduction to UK parliamentary seats is the most significant change in a century.

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said:

A stronger, more representative Senedd, elected through a proportional system, will be better equipped to continue to make a difference to the people of Wales.

The Welsh Conservative shadow constitution minister, Darren Millar said:

It’s disappointing that Welsh Labour ministers continue to press ahead with plans to increase the size of the Senedd at a cost of tens of millions each year while threatening to cut budgets for schools and hospitals.

Wales need more doctors, dentists, nurses and teachers, not more politicians.

The Welsh government believes the reforms will lead the additional running costs of between about £14.5m and £17.5m annually. It says this is a tiny fraction of the £24bn total annual Welsh budget. Set-up costs are expected to be in the region of £8m.

Updated

Ofcom says GB News broke impartiality rules by having two Tory MPs interview chancellor about budget

A GB News interview with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, aired before the spring budget breached impartiality rules, Ofcom has found.

Senior Conservative MPs Esther McVey and her husband, Philip Davies, were accused of hosting a “love-in” interview with their party colleague Jeremy Hunt on Saturday 11 March for their weekly show.

The watchdog said GB News “failed to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy” in its programme, given it featured “two sitting MP presenters from one political party interviewing the chancellor of the same political party”.

After the interview, Scottish National party MP John Nicolson, who sits on the Commons culture committee, claimed McVey and Davies “used their regular Saturday show on GB News to interview the Tory chancellor about how good the Tory budget was”. He added: “The interview was trailed by HM Treasury on its social media pages.”

Ofcom said in a statement:

Given this programme featured two sitting MP presenters from one political party interviewing the chancellor of the same political party about a matter of major political controversy and current public policy, we consider, in these circumstances, that GB News should have taken additional steps to ensure that due impartiality was preserved.

Our investigation therefore concluded that GB News failed to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy and current public policy within this programme, in breach of [the] rules.

UPDATE: In response to the ruling, a GB News spokesperson said:

We are disappointed by Ofcom’s ruling on our programme, Saturday Morning with Esther and Phil. We feel that the regulator’s definition of ‘due impartiality’ is imprecise.”

Ofcom’s finding also accepts that our programme included ‘reference to a wider range of views’ in its interview with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ahead of his budget in March.

These included opinions from independent journalist and commentator Michael Crick and SDP politician Patrick O’Flynn, who disagreed with Mr Hunt on several key points.

Updated

Truss claims some Tory MPs part of 'anti-growth coalition' in apparent dig at Sunak

Here are the key points from Liz Truss’ speech.

  • Truss said the UK had been stuck with economic stagnation for the past 25 years. She said:

The reality is that over time, we’re not bringing in as much as a country as we are spending. Our debt levels are close to 100% of GDP. We have the highest debt interest payments in the developed world, and according to the Growth Commission, the average person in the UK is now £9,100 worse off than the average person in the U.S.
I believe that the reason for the problems we have is the 25 years of economic consensus that have led us to this period of stagnation.

  • She said the problems was caused, not be too much capitalism, but by too little capitalism. She said:

Some say this is a crisis of capitalism – that free markets are responsible. But that’s not borne out by the facts. Quite the opposite is true. The fact is that since the Labour government was elected in 1997, we have moved towards being a more corporatist social democracy in Britain than we were in the 1980s and 1990s.

State spending now accounts for 46% of GDP, higher than it was in every year in the 1970s, bar 1975 – and up from 34.8% in 2000. No other European country, apart from Greece or Spain, has seen this level of growth in state spending.

There is also a growing burden of regulation. The cost of regulations introduced in 2022 alone is £10 billion according to the government – and I suspect this is an underestimate.

  • She claimed that one reason for this was economic policy making being “captured by the left”. She said:

Free market economists went off to lucrative jobs in the City, allowing academic institutions and think-tanks to be captured by the left. Demand management crept back in alongside neo-Keynesian-dominated monetary policy.

We Conservatives allowed the debate to be framed and led by the left. Whether it’s the anti-capitalist arguments of the Occupy movement, the woke diversity policies or the statist environmental solutions, the left have been making the running.

  • She said growth was higher in countries with lower taxes. She said:

The counter-examples of higher growth – in places like Poland, the Baltic states or Florida and Texas – are largely countries or states with low regulation and low taxes. In Poland corporation tax is 19% and income taxes are extremely flat.

  • She defended the mini-budget, saying it would have led to growth. (See 10am.)

  • But she admitted the mini-budget policies were rushed. She said:

Some people said we were in too much of a rush. And it is certainly true that I didn’t just try to fatten the pig on market day; I tried to rear the pig and slaughter it as well. I confess to that.

But the reason we were in a rush was because voters wanted to see results, having already voted for change twice – in 2016 and 2019.

I knew with the level of resistance and the lack of preparation time that things weren’t going to be perfect. However, given the situation for the UK was so difficult, it was important to take action and not do nothing. I went into politics to get things done, not to do public relations.

This is a bold claim because many of Truss’s critics say that, in her ministerial career, Truss prioritised PR, briefing the media and her Instagram presence above almost everything.

  • She said the people in the Conservative party were part of the “anti-growth coalition” oppposed to her free-market ideas. She said:

The anti-growth coalition is now a powerful force comprising the economic and political elite, corporatists, parts of the media and even a section of the Conservative parliamentary party. The policies I advocate simply aren’t fashionable on the London dinner party circuit.

When Truss referred to a section of the Tory party being part of the anti-growth coalition, she was presumbly referring to Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt (whom she appointed chancellor as her premiership was imploding), although when journalists invited her to criticise Sunak directly during the Q&A, she would not do so.

  • She said the government should set out plans to generate sustained 3% annual growth by the end of the decade and she set out some policy proposals that she argued would help. They included: reducing corporation tax to 19% again, slowing the rate at which spending on benefits and pensions increases, raising the retirement age, allowing fracking, abolishing the windfall tax, further regulatory divergence from the EU and delaying the implementation of some net zero measures, like delaying the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars scheduled for 2030.

Liz Truss speaking at the Institute for Government this morning.
Liz Truss speaking at the Institute for Government this morning. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Former minister Conor Burns says 'sustained silence' only useful thing 'toxic' Truss could do for Tories

Conor Burns, the Tory MP and former minister, has posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, saying Liz Truss is “toxic” with voters and that the only useful thing she could do for the party is shut up.

She is a drag anchor to any cause she attaches herself to. And toxic on the doorsteps. Only service she could provide is sustained silence.

Burns has an understandable grudge against Truss. She sacked him as a trade minister after an allegation was made that he had behaved inappropriately in a bar during the Tory conference. At that point the claim had not been properly investigated. A subsequent inquiry found he had done nothing wrong.

Truss dodges questions about whether she will withdraw resignation honours

During the Q&A Liz Truss was twice asked if she would withdraw her resignation honours as a favour to Rishi Sunak, who is under pressure to reject it. (See 9.32am.) Both times she ignored the question (which she was able to do fairly easily, because she was taking questions in groups, and with three people asking sometimes more than one question each, she had quite a lot of leeway in choosing what she wanted to overlook).

Updated

Truss says she will be attending the Conservative party conference. And she will be “saying more”, she promises.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

Truss says the bond markets are influenced by politics. If they know a policy does not have political support, they will not back them.

She says, before she became PM, she did not fully realise how much power bodies like the OBR have. She suggests that the mini-budget collapsed because there was a leak from the OBR saying her policies would cost £70bn, and that this figure turned out to be wrong.

UPDATE: The BBC’s Faisal Islam has the quote.

“I didn’t realise before I got into No 10 is just sheer level of power that an organisation like the OBR has, because after immediate aftermath of LDI crisis, there was leak by OBR of a £70bn hole thats, in essence, what forced us to reverse the decision on corporation tax” Truss

Updated

Truss says she only learnt what pension LDIs were days after mini-budget which collapsed because of them

Q: [From Liam Halligan, a journalist and economic commentator] When I speak to people in financial markets, they are critical of the role of the Bank of England during the period you were PM. Could you say more about that?

Truss says she was not the chancellor. She did not deal with the Bank directly.

But, on LDIs [liability-driven investments], she was blindsided. She did not know what an LDI was until the Monday after the mini-budget.

She says there needs to be more analysis of what happened in the markets?

Q: What would you have done differently?

Truss says preparing her premiership two years earlier would have helped.

She did not know this would happen. She thought Boris Johnson would survive. She was in Indonesia when it all kicked off. Launching a new economic policy two years before an election is not ideal, she says.

But she decided to go for it.

Obviously, if I’d known about the LDIs, we would have done things differently.

But, as for being more slick on the media, Truss suggests she cannot change the way she is.

Q: Are you happy with the way the OBR does its forecasts?

Truss says they should do more dynamic forecasting. They tend to understate the impact of regulation and tax cuts, and to overstate the impact of public spending.

Updated

This is from the Mirror’s Ashley Cowburn.

Liz Truss is taking more questions at a press conference post-IfG speech than she did in 49 days as Prime Minister.

Q: Should the Bank of England remain independent?

Truss says she thinks its mandate should be improved. It should focus more on the money supply.

Truss takes issue with a journalist who says the mini-budget “crashed the economy”. She says interest rates and gilt rates are higher now than after the mini-budget.

She does not want to attack the media, she says. But she says they could do a better job at explaining things like why the economy has stagnated, and why energy bills twice as high as in the US.

She says it is not helpful having all these issues reported just as part of a Conservative party soap opera.

Updated

Truss claims mini-budget tax cuts were 'fairly marginal'

Q: Will you apologise to people for interest rates going up?

Truss says interest rates were going up anyway. “The tax cuts we were were introducing were not major tax cuts,” she claims. She says they would have made a “fairly marginal difference”. But she was indicating a direction of travel, she says.

Updated

Truss says her premiership and mini-budget have given her 'real insight' into why delivering free market policies so hard

Truss is now taking questions from people in the audience.

Q: Do you think you should have consulted the Office for Budget Responsibility about your mini-budget plans?

Truss said the OBR was not asked to give a view on Covid spending decisions, like furlough. That reflects an underlying assumption that spending is good, she says.

She says there was no need to have an OBR forecast for the mini-budget. Her government was planning do to one later in the autumn.

Because the mini-budget spending plans were not bigger than furlough, her government did not think an OBR assessment was needed.

She also says she does not think the BBC did a good job of analysing the LDI [liability-driven investments] crisis in the pensions industry.

(The mini-budget collapsed because of the impact on LDIs in the pension industry. She seems to be saying the BBC was at fault for not warning her about this.)

Q: What is your response to Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, who said that instead of delivering Singapore on Thames, you delivered Argentina on the Channel? And do you see Rishi Sunak as part of the Tory anti-growth coalition?

Truss says people like Carney, and other central bankers, are not admitting their responsiblity for allowing government borrowing to get out of control. She says Carney is part of the economic consensus over the past 25 years that has led to low growth.

On the subject of anti-growth Tories, she says the party is split on this. People like her want to focus on growth. But some of her MP colleagues do not agree. She is making this speech today because she wants to win the argument, she says.

Q: Do you accept that you have personally undermined support for the policies that you support?

Truss says the mini-budget was attacked by international economic bodies.

But she had a choice – either accept the orthodoxy, or challenge it. She chose to challenge it.

In her book, which is out in April, she will argue this has given her “a real insight into why it’s so difficult for governments to deliver a smaller state or tax cuts”.

Updated

Q: How much power do you think economic institutions should have?

Truss says in some instances it is right for outside bodies, like regulators, to have power.

But over the last 30 or 40 years more power has gone to quangos, she says.

She says politicians end up getting the blame anyway. She thinks politicians should have more power.

Q: So would you be happy with, say, John McDonnell and the Treasury not constrained by outside bodies?

Truss says institutions are Balkanised. There are different ones competing with each other.

She says, fundamentally, she is a democrat. If the public elect John McDonnell as chancellor, he should be able to implement its policies.

Q: Can you give examples of where you were blocked from doing things by institutions?

Truss says she is writing a book that will cover this.

She thinks many civil servants are brilliant at what they do. But she thinks “institutional bureaucracy” stops politicians doing what they want.

During the Tory leadership campaign she tried to challenge the economic orthodoxy of the Treasury. She did not get much support.

Updated

Truss says problem with NHS not lack of money

Liz Truss has finished her speech. She is now taking questions, firstly from the Institute for Government’s Hannah White, who is chairing the event.

Q: Voters are already unhappy with the state of public services. Wouldn’t they be worse under the cuts you were planning?

Truss turns to housing. With proper reform of planning laws, housing could be cheaper. But that would take time, she says.

People want better services, cheaper housing, cheaper childcare and lower fuel bills, she says. She says they do not care how those things are delivered.

She says it would have been hard to implement these reforms before an election in 2024. But, as PM, she wanted to spell out a trajectory for reform.

Q: How would you reform the NHS?

Truss says there are serious problems with it. She wanted to decentralise, and to push power down. “I don’t think the problem in the NHS is lack of money,” she says.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected the post because Hannah White was chairing the event, not Catherine Haddon.

Updated

Liz Truss is about to give her speech to the Institute for Government now.

I will post the highlights when I’ve read the full text.

After she finishes, she will be taking questions. I will cover those exchanges here in full.

Updated

In her speech this morning Liz Truss will claim that it is wrong to describe some of the measures in her mini-budget last year as unfunded tax cuts. She will say:

I felt we needed to begin reforming our tax system with measures to make it more business-friendly and make the UK a more attractive place to invest.

The impending hike in corporation tax needed to be reversed. Cutting the top rate of income tax would show Britain was open to talent.

Reforming IR35 would have cut red tape for small businesses. And a return to VAT-free shopping for foreign visitors would make our great cities more attractive.

Some people have described these as “unfunded tax cuts”. This is not a fair or accurate description.

Independent calculations by the CEBR [the Centre for Economics and Business Research] suggest that cutting the higher rate of income tax and the ‘tourist tax’ would have increased rather than decreased revenues within five years.

So quite the opposite of being unfunded, these tax cuts could have increased funding for our public services.

The CEBR also says that the cost of freezing corporation tax was much less than the Treasury suggested.

Their costing of the measures was £25bn over five years, not £45bn.

Regrettably the static models used by the OBR failed to acknowledge this.

Rupert Harrison, George Osborne’s former chief of staff, argues this is nonsense.

Even on its own terms this still leaves £25bn of permanent additional borrowing at a time when the main issue was inflation. But the CEBR costings are also wildly optimistic, and it’s factually incorrect to say that the OBR models are static.

Updated

Former Tory Treasury aide accuses Liz Truss of 'brass neck' in thinking party wants her advice on economic policy

Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff to George Osborne when Osborne was chancellor and who is now the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Bicester and Woodstock, has accused Liz Truss of “brass neck” in offering advice on economic policy. He claims nobody in the party is listening to her.

Updated

Labour calls for Liz Truss’s resignation honours list to be blocked as ex-PM gives speech defending mini-budget

Good morning. Saturday will mark the first anniversary of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, arguably the most disastrous “fiscal event” in the long history of the Treasury. But Truss herself does not see it that way, and this morning she will give a speech defending her record and saying what she thinks the UK must do to promote growth. She has given speeches focusing on foreign policy since she resigned as PM, and earlier this year she published a 4,000-word article in the Telegraph defending the mini-budget, but this is her first big speech on domestic politics as an ex-PM. Kiran Stacey has a preview here.

Truss’s decision to give the speech will fuel speculation that she is interested in some sort of political comeback. No prime minister has returned to No 10 after leaving office since Harold Wilson in 1974, and the prospect of the Tories giving Truss another go seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. In a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday, asked about a political comeback, she did not rule it out. She told the paper:

I want to stay involved in politics, I really care about politics. I went into politics not to become prime minister but to change things, that’s what motivates me and I will not rest until we have achieved the changes because I believe that Britain does need real change.

I think that can be delivered but I’m not specifying any role for myself in the future.

In response to the speech, the Labour party is saying Rishi Sunak should cancel her resignation honours list. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News this morning:

The key issue here is that it’s 12 months now since that quite disastrous set of decisions the Conservative government took, which ran our economy off the cliff, it led to a run on pension funds, it means that homeowners are paying hundreds if not thousands of pounds more on their mortgages. And at the same time, I think something like £300bn has been wiped off the value of properties so people’s mortgages are going up, rent going up, and the value properties coming down because of decisions taken by the Conservative government 12 months ago.

And now for Liz Truss to be out here today saying it was the London dinner party circuit that blocked her when people in Leicester, in Ashfield, in Barry and Bolton and Bolsover are paying more for food, I think is just extraordinary.

If Rishi Sunak had any backbone, he would block this Liz Truss list today, because I don’t think businesses, hardworking families paying so much more on their mortgage think that list should go ahead. In many ways it’s a kick in the teeth.

Truss’s resignation honours list has not been announced yet, but it has been reported that there are 14 names on it, some of whom will get peerages. No 10 has in the past indicated that it won’t block the list.

I will be covering the speech in some detail. I will also be looking at reaction to Keir Starmer saying he wants a major rewrite of the Brexit deal. Jem Bartholomew has the story here.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Liz Truss, the former PM, gives a speech to the Institute for Government.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.

Updated

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