Truss says she will do ‘all I can to help struggling households’ with fuel bills – UK politics live

The Rishi Sunak campaign is now formally accusing Liz Truss of doing a U-turn following her concession that she is considering offering people payments to help them with energy costs. (See 10.11am, 11.40am and 3.45pm). Last week she ruled out giving people “handouts”. A spokeperson for the Sunak campaign said:

This is a major u-turn on the biggest issue currently facing the country.

It’s all very well offering empty words about ‘doing all you can’. But there aren’t lots of different ways to act on this. Taking action means providing direct support, which Truss had previously dismissed as ‘handouts’.

Twice now, Truss has made a serious moral and political misjudgement on a policy affecting millions of people, after last week reversing plans to cut the pay of teachers and the armed forces outside London. Mistakes like this in government would cost the Conservative party the next general election.

Liz Truss has issued a new press statement signalling that she is open to offering people payments to help them cope with rising energy bills if she becomes prime minister. It is the culmination of a U-turn (see 11.40am) that has been gradually under way since the end of last week, when she told told the Financial Times in an interview: “I would do things is in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts.”

In the press notice she still stresses that her priority is cutting taxes. But whereas at the Tory hustings last night she was happy not to match what Rishi Sunak was saying about the need to offer extra help to people who would not benefit from her proposed national insurance cut, or would not benefit enough, now she is suggesting that she would implement some sort of energy support package like the one he is proposing.

This has all the hallmarks of the sort of correction you get from a campaign that realises it is on the wrong side of an argument.

The press notice quotes Truss as saying:

I understand how difficult the rising cost of living is making life for many, and if elected I will do all that I can to help struggling households.

The press notice also points out that she has used language like this before in the campaign, and in an interview in the Evening Standard today she also talks about doing “all I can” to help people with fuel bills.

The release also includes a quote from a campaign spokesperson accusing Rishi Sunak of “Gordon Brown-style politics of envy”. The spokesperson says:

Rishi Sunak wouldn’t know how people benefit from a tax cut because he has never cut a tax in his life. People didn’t vote for the Conservative party to be subjected to old-fashioned, Gordon Brown-style politics of envy.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has revealed that, when she met Liz Truss at the Cop26 climate crisis conference in Glasgow last year, one of the main things Truss was interested in was how to get featured in the fashion magazine Vogue.

And when Truss learned that Sturgeon had appeared in it twice already, Truss “looked a little bit as if she’d swallowed a wasp”, Sturgeon said.

She was speaking in a Q&A with the broadcaster Iain Dale, and responding to a question about Truss dismissing Sturgeon recently as an “attention seeker”. The comment attracted considerable controversy, partly because it was a slur against an elected head of government, and partly because Truss is not exactly publicity shy herself.

Sturgeon said when she initially heard about the comment, she thought “it was made up, it was a spoof”. Then she said she met Truss at the Cop26 summit last year, shortly after being interviewed by Vogue. Sturgeon went on:

That was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about, she wanted to know how she could get into Vogue – and she calls me an attention seeker. I said to her they came and asked me.

I didn’t really mean to do this, but I said to her it hadn’t actually been my first time in Vogue, it had been my second time.

It looked a little bit as if she’d swallowed a wasp.

I’m sure she’ll be in Vogue before too long.

I remember it because there we were at the world’s biggest climate change conference in Glasgow, world leaders about to arrive

That was the main topic of conversation she was interested in pursuing. And once we’d exhausted that it kind of dried up.

I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations about many more substantive things.

Asked about her dealings with previous Tory leaders, Sturgeon said:

I think perhaps uncharitably I described my conversations with Theresa May when she was prime minister, as being soul-destroying. I look back somewhat fondly now on that.

At least May took the job of being prime minister seriously, Sturgeon said. By comparison, dealings with Boris Johnson were “one long bluster”, she said.

You know, he was a third prime minister I’ve dealt with as first minister. It was literally like nothing I’ve ever dealt with before in terms of any senior politician.

You know, I’m going to be blunt here, he was a disgrace to the office of prime minister.

At the Tory hustings last night Liz Truss said that, if she had the chance, she would vote to end the privileges committee inquiry into whether Boris Johnson lied to MPs about Partygate. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said today this showed:

Liz Truss is continuing to prop up the disgraced prime minister even after he has been forced from office. She is aiding and abetting his attempts to dodge scrutiny and evade accountability to the public for his behaviour.

Boris Johnson created a rotten culture at the heart of Downing Street and toxified the Tory party from top to bottom. Liz Truss enabled him and is showing she would continue to follow his lead if she is installed into No 10. Liz Truss must now confirm in no uncertain terms that she will not undermine the privileges committee and she will appoint an ethics chief on day one of her leadership.

While the Tories offer more of the same, only Labour will stop the rot and bring the change our country needs.

The UK government has published its legal submission to the supreme court explaining why it believes the court should declare that the Scottish parliament does not have the right to legislate for a second independence referendum.

As PA Media reports, the Scottish government says its bill for a second independence referendum is lawful, under devolution law, because the referendum would only be advisory. But the UK government says this argument is not credible. PA says:

Lord Stewart QC, the advocate general for Scotland, published his written submission on behalf of UK ministers today.

It argues the case on whether a prospective bill, which would legislate for another referendum, would be within the powers of Holyrood.

But the case, brought forward by Scotland’s lord advocate, Dorothy Bain, “does not fall within the jurisdiction” of the supreme court because the bill has not yet passed through the Scottish parliament, according to UK law officers.

Stewart also argues that even if the court does decide it has jurisdiction over the matter, Holyrood would be unable to hold a lawful referendum

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has stated she intends to hold a referendum on 19 October 2023, depending on the court’s ruling.

Stewart said: “A referendum on Scottish independence plainly (at least) relates to the reserved matters of the United Kingdom of Scotland and England and of the parliament of the United Kingdom. That conclusion is unaffected by whether the referendum is, in its outcome, advisory or legally binding.”

In its submission to the court, submitted last month, the Scottish government leaned heavily on any future referendum not being “self-executing”, meaning it would be purely advisory and only meant as a way to ascertain the views of the Scottish people.

Stewart said it was wrong to consider the referendum as “advisory”.

If the decision favoured independence, he said it would be used to “build momentum” towards the “termination of the union”.

His submission said: “It is, of course, right that the outcome of the referendum provided for by the draft bill has no legal effect: it is not self-executing. But nor can it credibly be suggested that the outcome of the referendum will be advisory in the sense of being treated as a matter of academic interest only.

“Were the outcome to favour independence, it would be used (and no doubt used by the SNP as the central plank) to seek to build momentum towards achieving that end: the termination of the union and the secession of Scotland. It is precisely in that hope that the draft bill is being proposed.”

Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor, has defended the government’s decision to draw up contingency plans for power cuts this winter in the event of the UK running short of gas. He said he thought the UK would be “in a good place” in terms of energy supply.

Speaking on a visit to Belfast, Zahawi said the government was making “all sorts of contingency plans” for what might happen over the winter. He went on:

One of the reasons that I think we had one of the most successful vaccine programmes in the world is because we prepared for all sorts of scenarios.

I am very, very confident that the work we will do with the energy producers and suppliers will mean we will be in a good place.

Zahawi also said he would ensure the people in Northern Ireland receive the £400 per household payments promised by the government to help people with energy bills. There has been uncertainty about how these payments will be delivered in Northern Ireland because the power-sharing executive is not functioning.

Zahawi said:

My pledge is that we will operationalise this and deliver it because that is what the prime minister wants me to do, that is what I will do.

Today is about making sure that I work with the utility regulator, with the economy and community ministers to make sure we now deliver against that, and do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible, so the meeting today is to make sure we get that done.

Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury and a leading Liz Truss supporter in the Tory leadership contest, has posted a thread on Twitter about her response to the energy bill crisis.

He defends her decision not to announce firm proposals to help people with rising costs now, and says she will take decisions in the light of all the facts when, or if, she becomes prime minister. (Rishi Sunak has not announced firm plans for extra payments either, although he has been a lot more specific about the type of approach he favours.)

Clarke also says Truss will “look at what more needs to be done” if she becomes PM and “do the responsible and honest thing by considering [proposals drawn up by government officials] when in office”.

Given that these proposals are very likely to involve some form of targeted help for people most in need (because that is what the Treasury has done before), this is confirmation that Truss has moved quite a long way from last week, when she was ruling out “handouts”.