Michael Gove tells Liz Truss that cutting tax for highest earners is wrong – as it happened

7.32pm BST

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7.10pm BST

Evening summary

• Liz Truss has refused to rule out public spending cuts and a real-terms drop in benefits to help pay for the mini-budget, as she sought to quell fury over her handling of the economy by admitting she should have “laid the ground better”.

• Michael Gove has launched a sustained broadside at Truss’s economic plans, saying it was “not Conservative” to fund tax cuts from borrowing and marked a betrayal of the party’s one nation 2019 election manifesto. He was probably the most outspoken of the MPs critical of the mini-budget, but many other backbenchers – from the right and the left of the party – expressed reservations about cutting spending on the poor while going ahead with a tax cut aimed that the wealthiest. Even some government ministers spoke about the need for the government to proceed carefully, hinting that some sort of rethink would be welcome. Ultimately the mini-budget measures will have to be passed by MPs and the mood at conference suggests that Truss would struggle to get a majority if she tries to push through the abolition of the 45% top rate of tax alongside significant spending cuts that would penalise poorer people.

• The City business partner of Jacob Rees-Mogg has been handed a peerage and job as a senior minister by Liz Truss’s government in a move likely to trigger accusations of cronyism.

• Steve Baker, a Northern Ireland minister, has apologised to Brussels and Dublin for the way he and fellow Brexiters ignored their concerns about Northern Ireland being taken out of the EU. (See 6.05pm.)

Liz Truss in the audience at the Tory conference. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images