LIZ Truss has said “it is fair” that her plans to cut taxes benefit the rich rather than the poor.
The frontrunner in the race to become the next prime minister has pledged to “start cutting taxes from day one” with a new Budget and Spending Review that would reverse April’s rise in National Insurance and next year’s corporation tax increase from 19% to 25%.
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, she insisted it was “wrong” to look at everything “through the lens of redistribution” and said discussions about improving social equality in recent decades had been “holding our country back”.
Truss made the staggering remarks while she sat in front of a graph that showed her National Insurance plan would give back a mere £7.66 to the poor while putting almost £2000 into the pockets of the wealthy.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford accused the Foreign Secretary of “warped political choices” amid soaring energy price rises, while SNP MP Tommy Sheppard said she was still in the mindset of trying to appease right-wing members of the Tory party.
She told Laura Kuenssberg: “To look at everything through the lens of redistribution, I believe is wrong.
“What I’m about is growing the economy and growing the economy benefits everybody.
“So far the economic debate for the last 20 years has been dominated by discussions about distribution and what’s happened is we’ve had relatively low economic growth.
“So we’ve had no more than an average of 1% growth and that has been holding our country back.”
"[Is it] fair to give the weathiest people more money back?"#BBCLauraK asks Tory leadership contender Liz Truss about her plans for a National Insurance cut "It is fair" says Truss#BBCLauraK https://t.co/vF4LvmgYE5 pic.twitter.com/oYJuvFNLKQ
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 4, 2022
Kuenssberg then said: “So it’s fair to give the wealthiest people more money back?”
Truss replied “It is fair.”
Shortly after the interview was broadcast, Blackford said on social media: “When it is the poorest who are most exposed to energy price rises she wants to reward the richest in society. Warped political choices.”
He added: “We all know that those most at risk in this Tory-created cost of living crisis are those who rely on bare-bones benefits and the working poor who already don’t pay income tax because their pay packets are so inadequate.
“Income tax cuts will do the square root of hee-haw to help these desperate families survive this coming winter.
“If, as expected, Truss replaces the habitually hopeless Boris Johnson as prime minister then she has an unmissable opportunity to provide an appropriate and substantial package of measures to help both families and businesses weather a storm the Tories helped create.
“She really only has one big chance to get it right - so she simply can’t squander it on warped political choices like tax cuts for those who need it least."
Sheppard, MP for Edinburgh East, said Truss would have to start realising she needs to speak for the whole of the UK and not just Tory members.
He added: "The Tory party exists in order to defend the wealthy and privileged so this does not surprise me.
"What is quite shocking, of course, is that Liz Truss would have the cheek to not be embarrassed by that attitude when we can see the hardship people are facing.
"She is still in the mindset of trying to appease right-wing people in the Tory party. If she’s going to survive beyond next week, she’s going to have to realise there are an awful lot of other people in the UK that she needs to talk to.
"I found her performance very unimpressive."
Asked where billions of pounds of funding would be coming from, she insisted that cutting taxes would raise revenue.
Discussing her plans for corporation tax, she denied it was a gamble.
“This is about not raising a tax. Last time we cut corporation tax, we saw the revenues increase. So, I don’t agree with the proposition that this is static, that it’s just a certain amount of money will come into the Exchequer,” said the Foreign Secretary.
“What I know is that putting up tax on business is not going to attract more businesses to invest in this country."
