Liz Truss rules out new taxes in final push for PM

Liz Truss has ruled out introducing new taxes if she is announced as the UK’s next prime minister on 5 September.

Quizzed about her tax plans during the final hustings of the Tory leadership contest, the foreign secretary replied: “No new taxes.” She also vowed to conduct a “full review of our tax system”, including business rates paid by firms and the tax burden on families.

Her pledge not to introduce new taxes despite the cost-of-living crisis comes “at a time when experts are warning that the government faces the need for tens of billions of support funding to help households and businesses keep the heating on this winter”, said The Independent’s political editor Andrew Woodcock.

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Truss’s promises “risk significantly limiting her room for manoeuvre” if she becomes Britain’s next PM, he added.

But LBC’s political editor Theo Underwood pointed out that while Truss had “committed to ‘no new taxes’”, she “did not commit to not raising existing taxes”.

During the final hustings, Truss also “refused to be drawn into further detail” on whether she was considering slashing VAT, said the Financial Times. “I am not ruling things in and out... I’m not sitting here writing a budget or fiscal event,” she said.

Truss has previously said that she would reverse April’s National Insurance rise.

Institute for Fiscal Studies boss Paul Johnson told The Times this week that her “simplistic” approach to solving the cost-of-living crisis by slashing taxes would “completely crash public finances”.

The winner of the leadership contest is due to be announced on Monday at around 12.30pm.