Truss says in principle she still wants to cut 45% top rate of tax And here are some more lines from the round of TV interviews that Liz Truss recorded this morning. Truss said she was still in principle in favour of cutting the 45% top rate of tax – even though she had shelved plans to abolish it now. She said: I would like to see the higher rate lower. I want us to be a competitive country but I have listened to feedback, I want to take people with me. She claimed that spending cuts would not involve cuts to frontline services. The government has said departments will have to stick within existing budgets, even though inflation has gone up by more than was expected, meaning they face cuts in real terms. Talking about her plans for public spending, Truss said: There will be some areas where there are projects the government is doing that we don’t think should go ahead, but what I’m not talking about is reducing frontline services. Critics say it is very hard to cut departmental budgets without frontline services being affected. She said she wanted to see more Rwanda-style deals to deter people crossing the Channel on small boats, and she said she would consider “all options” to deal with the problem. She said she did not want to see immigration rising. She said: I don’t want to see numbers going up, what I want to see is the right people coming in with the right skills that can contribute to Britain. She rejected suggestions that Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, should be sacked for saying benefits should rise in line with inflation (see 8.02am) – a comment that seemed to breach collective cabinet responsibility, because Mordaunt was pre-judging a decision not yet taken. Asked if Mordaunt had to go, Truss replied: “No, she doesn’t. This is about a decision that we are taking later on this year.” Truss rejected a suggestion that her first month in office had been a disaster. “I don’t agree with that analysis,” she said, when it was put to her. She said the government has no plans to abolish inheritance tax – even though Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, has said personally he would favour the idea. (Alert readers will have noticed a pattern in the blog today. With ministers sounding off about policy, regardless of what the government line is, unity and message discipline is breaking down.) Truss refused an invitation to apologise to people who lost mortgage deals, or who are paying higher mortgages, as a result of the market turmoil triggered by the mini-budget. And she also said she had no shame over this. She told Sky News: I think there’s absolutely no shame in a leader listening to people and responding and that’s the kind of person I am. I’ve been totally honest and upfront with people that everything I have done as prime minister is focused on helping people get through what is a very difficult winter. She said there was no immediate prospect of Ukraine joining Nato. She said she did not support the return of the Parthenon marbles to Greece. Early evening summary Liz Truss’s government is in chaos after the chancellor refused to confirm he would bring forward his budget to calm the markets and the home secretary accused fellow MPs of a coup against the prime minister. Suella Braverman has revived a previous Conservative pledge to reduce net migration to tens of thousands of people, despite the failure of successive governments to hit the same target over a nine-year period. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are being warned not to stretch their plans for medium-term growth beyond the traditional definition of three to five years amid concerns in Whitehall that the fiscal plan may take the best part of a decade to deliver. Liz Truss has said she is still in principle in favour of cutting the 45% top rate of tax – even though she has shelved plans to abolish it now. (See 3.14pm.) Braverman promises new legislation to stop people crossing Channel in small boats claiming asylum Suella Braverman, the home secretary, received two standing ovations during her speech – one when she said “not give up” on tackling the small boats crossing the Channel, and another as she wound up. Hardline speeches from home secretaries always go down well at Tory conference, and this was one was in that tradition. Here are the key points. Braverman said she would legislate to stop anyone crossing the Channel on a small boat claim asylum. She said: I will commit to you that I will look to bring forward legislation make it clear that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route. And that is so that we can support those who need that help the most, including women and girls. This is something her predecessor, Priti Patel, said she would achieve through the Nationality and Borders Act. But she also stressed that there were no easy solutions to the problems of migrants crossing the Channel. She said: We’ve all heard pledges and promises, but this problem is complex and entrenched, and there are many forces working against us. Among her opponents on this issue, she cited the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats, the Guardian and lawyers. “The Guardian will have a meltdown,” she promised. She said the UK should not be relying on migrant labour. She said: And we mustn’t forget how to do things for ourselves. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t train up enough of our own HGV drivers, or butchers, or fruit pickers. The way we build a high skilled, high wage economy is by encouraging business to invest in capital and domestic labour, not relying wholly on low skilled, foreign workers. This seems to contradict what Liz Truss told the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend about how she wanted to increase the number of seasonal agricultural workers coming to the UK. Braverman claimed modern slavery laws, introduced by Theresa May when she was home secretary, were being abused. Braverman said: But the hard truth is that our modern slavery laws are being abused by people gaming the system. We have seen a 450% increase in modern slavery claims since 2014. Today, the largest group of small boats migrants are from Albania, a safe country. Many of them claim to be trafficked as modern slaves. That’s despite them having paid thousands of pounds to come here or having willingly taken a dangerous journey on the Channel. The truth is many of them are not modern slaves and their claims of being trafficked are lies. We need to make sure our system strikes a right balance. Our laws need to be resilient against abuse whilst at the same time ensuring we help those in genuine need. Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the Commons education committee, told Radio 4’s PM programme that benefits should be uprated in line with inflation because the Tories should care about growing society, as well as growing the economy. He said There’s no other way to say that things have been grim, grim at conference, and grim over the past week. The prime minister keeps talking about growing the economy, but we have got to talk about growing society as well and being the party of human and social capital, and not just the party of economic ... because both go hand in hand. What does that mean? That means a relentless focus on the cost of living and helping the lower-paid and absolutely raising benefits in line with inflation as Boris Johnson pledged. It means looking at how we’re going to ensure more affordable housing, how we’re championing education and skills, and at the moment we seem to be doing none of those things because the government seem bogged down in this argument amongst, in essence, people in the cabinet about the tax cuts for the well-off. The German ambassador to the UK has said that if the UK implemented laws arising out of the Northern Ireland protocol bill it would be “the end” of talks to find a solution to the Brexit impasse over trade arrangements between GB and NI. Miguel Berger told a Centre for European Reform panel at the conference: We need to find a solution without the application of the protocol bill, because I think if this would be implemented, in my view at the end of the talks. But he said he was hopeful that talks, which have resumed, would deliver a solution and allow everyone “to move forward”. The polling company Redfield and Wilton Strategies has published new polling giving Labour a 38-point lead in red wall seats. The detailed figures will make bleak reading for the Conservatives. One graph shows how the proportion of voters in red wall seat saying they “strongly disapprove” of Liz Truss has tripled since mid September. Lord Frost becomes latest Tory to call for benefits to be uprated in line with inflation Many of the Tories publicly calling for benefits to be uprated in line with inflation are on the one nation, leftish wing of the party. But rightwingers are making this case too, and this afternoon Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister who on most issues is a strong supporter of the Liz Truss agenda, has joined those saying not uprating in line with inflation would be wrong. He told GB News: I’m going to say something which I don’t say very often, which is I agree with Penny Mordaunt (see 8.02am) and I think she’s got this right. The government has made a commitment to uprate benefits. It shouldn’t take on battles it can’t win. People feel insecure going into the autumn and I think it should stick to this commitment. We should, of course, for the future, look at incentives to work and probably there is going to have to be reform over time, but choose your moments and reassure people and take people with you. That’ll be my view in the following the events of the last few days. In the conference hall Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has just started speaking. According to briefing in advance, she will announce plans for a new law to stop anyone crossing the Channel on a small boat from claiming asylum in the UK (even thought the Nationality and Borders Act, passed by Priti Patel, was supposed to achieve this). I will post a summary once the speech is over. Andrew Marr, the former BBC political editor, has been attending party conferences since the 1980s. If you thought our mid-afternoon upsum was harsh (see 3.34pm), you should listen to his take on LBC this morning. He says that it’s an omnishambles conference and that it feels fatal for Liz Truss. Patel says Tories must restore their reputation as party of "sustainable public spending" Priti Patel, the former home secretary, delivered her first major political intervention at a fringe meeting at the party conference today. In remarks briefed overnight ahead of her speech to the Times, she criticised the decison to announce unfunded tax cuts, saying the Tories had to be the party of “sustainable public spending”. She said: We are spending today with no thought of tomorrow, and like the Blob in the old horror film, the more resources are absorbed today the bigger the problem gets and the more resources it will need to eat up tomorrow. Right now, we have got into a pattern of borrowing huge amounts to fix today’s urgent problems or generate short-term populist headlines. Each time it seems that there’s a good case, but what does this mean for future generations? I want to see our party regain its credibility by restoring its commitment to sustainable public spending . . . which is affordable today, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. As Sophia Sleigh reports at Huffpost UK, Patel also said that “nothing would be more divisive” than having another leadership contest to replace Liz Truss. Education minister accused of "relentless uni-bashing" by Jo Johnson Jo Johnson, the former Tory universities minister, has criticised the education minister Andrea Jenkyns for saying at a fringe meeting yesterday that “the current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies than the apprenticeships shaping construction”. In an interview with Times Radio, Johnson said this “relentless uni-bashing” was tiresome. Accusing Jenkyns of recycling a cliche, he said: It used to be that ‘Mickey Mouse studies’ was the favourite sort of target for attack and now it’s become Harry Potter studies. The reality is these courses are few and far between relative to the numbers of really valuable courses that our higher education system is providing … Our universities are a really great national asset for the UK and this relentless uni-bashing is a bit wearisome. So I would urge ministers to go easy on the sort of the relentless negativity about a sector which is really one of our great strengths as a country. What you can see outside the room where senior Tories meet donors Off the maps in the brochure and in a quiet(ish) corner several levels above the conference floor, Conservative donors, senior MPs, and ministers are rubbing shoulders in the imaginatively named Blue Room. It is a place where donors, and other VIPs, can meet senior party figures discreetly. Its location is so poorly publicised that the Guardian ended up guiding a minister’s bag carrier as well as the president of a significant Conservative local association to the doors of the Jane How Room, which boasts “stunning views over Centenary Square”. The Blue Room, a long-standing fixture of Tory conferences, is this year – as it was last year – sponsored by Tratos, a firm led by party donor Maurizio Bragagni. As opposed to its modest presence at the Labour party conference floor, the firm does not have a stall with the general corporate exhibitors, choosing instead to get its branding in front of the eyes of the Conservative party’s most senior figures. Tratos’s sponsorship comes despite a Conservative party spokesperson criticising Bragagni after the BBC revealed remarks he had made about “foreign Muslims” running English cities. Earlier this afternoon outside the Blue Room, Bragagni greeted the Guardian, saying he was “fine, always fine. Better than me: only the Pope.” Following a steady drumbeat set by Conservative party HQ, a stream of ministers came and went during the two hours the Guardian spent observing the comings and goings, such as Thérèse Coffey, James Cleverly, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, and Ranil Jayawardena. Politicians past and present including Liam Fox, Brooks Newmark, and Shaun Bailey, the unsuccessful London mayoral candidate, as well as the TV personality Georgia Toffolo all passed the Guardian’s nook outside the Blue Room. And with them, donors, businessmen, strategists, and advisers, talking away from prying eyes and ears. Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, has restated her claim that, if Liz Truss wants to change the government’s policy agenda, she should call a general election.