Truss Warns She Will Make Unpopular Decisions As PM

But hints strongly at freezing energy bills if she enters No 10

- Kate Devlin

Liz Truss has warned she will make unpopular decisions as prime minister and defended tax cuts that benefit the wealthy as "fair", despite growing calls to ditch them.

She pledged immediate action will be taken on soaring household bills if, as expected, she wins the keys to No 10 today, with the promise of a plan within her first week.

She is strongly considering freezing energy bills, according to reports in The Daily Telegraph and The Times today. The Times reports the package could be on the scale of the furlough scheme introduced by Rishi Sunak when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, while The Telegraph suggests the specifics of such a policy are still being debated.

But despite the gathering storm clouds and warnings her response to the crisis could have to run to tens of billions of pounds, she said: "Britain has been through worse, frankly."

And she warned the public, who did not get a say in who becomes the new prime minister, that there would be difficult decisions ahead and "not all those decisions will be popular".

Tax cuts which could hand nearly £2,000 to high earners were fair, she said, because they paid more overall. But former chancellor Lord Hammond warned that cuts would add to already spiralling inflation and that the Conservatives' "reputation for competent government" was at stake.

David Davis, on the right of the party, warned Ms Truss she faces a difficult balancing act and cautioned her not to "give low tax a bad name, by going down a route which leads to an increase in interest costs, massive increases in people's mortgages or a decline in the pound".