Truss calls for Goverment to slash taxes one year after disastrous mini budget

The former Prime Minister will defend decisions made during her brief spell in Number 10, calling it unfair to say she had pursued unfunded tax cuts.

She will also call for Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party to embrace free market ideologies, and ditch some green commitments amid cost-of-living pressures on voters.

Ms Truss was forced out of office last October after the budget of £45 billion of tax cuts outlined by her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng sparked an economic crisis.

The speech at the Institute for Government think tank is expected to see Ms Truss reject suggestions that her tax cuts were “unfunded”.

In her first significant intervention on the economy since leaving office, Ms Truss will say: “Some people have described these as ‘unfunded tax cuts’. This is not a fair or accurate description.

“Independent calculations by the CEBR 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.”

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak’s popularity falls below Boris Johnson’s in latest dire poll

She will claim Mr Sunak’s Government has spent £35 billion more than she would have as prime minister, arguing that if the policies included in her growth plan had been followed, growth would have eventually been higher.

“Investment would not have faltered in the North Sea, were it not for the windfall tax,” she will say. “We would have got moving on fracking and lower energy bills would now be on the horizon.

“A more competitive rate of corporation tax would have persuaded the likes of AstraZeneca not to relocate elsewhere. There would have been more duty-free shoppers and a boom in the number of self-employed.”

She will repeat her attack on the so-called “anti-growth coalition”, and argue that her plan was not implemented due to a reaction from “the political and economic establishment which fed into the markets”.

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She will say: “I was effectively forced into a policy reversal under the threat of a UK meltdown.”

But she will concede that she and Mr Kwarteng were in a “rush” to get “results”.

“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,” Ms Truss will admit.

In setting out her proposals for growth, she will call on her successor Mr Sunak to “be bold” to deliver growth.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is currently preparing for the Autumn Statement, but tax cuts have repeatedly been ruled out while inflation remains high.

Ms Truss will label that a mistake and call for a swathe of cuts, including bringing corporation tax back down to 19 per cent and reforming marginal tax rates.

She will also suggest binning the tourist tax and abolishing the windfall tax.

“We need to get a grip on the ballooning welfare and pensions bill,” she will add. “This means slowing the rate of increases to benefits and tougher work requirements. It also means raising the retirement age further.

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