Truss says it is "unfair" to blame her mini-budget for interest rates going up The Spectator has released the transcript of its interview with Liz Truss, and the full exchange went live on Spectator TV at 5pm. Fraser Nelson, the magazine’s editor, and Katy Balls, its political editor, were interviewing Truss. It was not the most hostile interview of her career, and much of what she said in it just echoed what she said in her Sunday Telegraph article yesterday. In that piece, she argued that her mini-budget would have worked had it not been for the market instability caused by the extent to which pension funds were relying on liability driven investments (LDIs), which were very vulnerable to increases in long-term gilt yields (long-term government borrowing costs). As David Gauke, a former Tory Treasury minister, pointed out yesterday she ignored the fact that it was the mini-budget that caused the market turmoil that destabilished LDIs, not the LDIs that caused the market turmoil. Here are the lines that stood out from the interview. Truss claimed that it was “unfair” to blame the mini-budget for the hike in interest rates that happened immediately afterwards. She said: On the mortgage point I do want to address this – because we’ve been living in a very low interest rate world and mortgage rates have been going up. The reason there was a specific issue around the time we’re talking about in September, a lot of it is to do with the liability driven investments [LDIs] and the impact they had on the market. So I don’t think it’s fair to blame interest rises on what we did. I think that’s unfair. This is not the view of most economists. The Bank of England raises interest rates the day before the mini-budget but, as the Bank of England explained in a memo to the Treasury committee last autumn, long-term gilt yields – the cost of government borrowing – went up sharply after the mini-budget. And it was this that led many mortgage providers to significantly increase the interest rates they were charging UK customers. Truss claimed that she had “learnt a lot” from her time in government. Asked if she was the right person to be making the case for her low-tax, pro-growth beliefs, given how her premiership ended, she replied: Nobody would be more delighted than me if there were lots of other people coming forward and making these arguments. I would be more than delighted to have other people go out there and make the case. But the fact is there aren’t enough people making the case, full stop. And I believe that I’ve learnt a lot in my time in government, I understand what some of the pitfalls are, I’ve been through the mill on this and we do need to do things differently. She said she would not want to be PM again. Asked if she wanted the job again, she said: “No”. But she said she wanted to carry on making the arguments for her beliefs. She said: I definitely want to be part of promoting a pro-growth agenda. I definitely want to carry on as an MP. I’m positive about the future of Britain and I’m positive about the future of the Conservative party. I think we need to start building more of a strong intellectual base. But I’m not desperate to get back into Number 10, no.’ She did not apologise for anything that happened during her premiership, either to voters, some of whom were affected by the economic consequences of what happened, or to her party, which has seen its ratings plummet in the opinion polls as a result. She did not apologise in her Sunday Telegraph article either. To be fair, she was not asked in the interview to apologise. But a more self-aware politician may have concluded that some sort of apology was in order. Early evening summary Liz Truss has said that it would be “unfair” to blame her mini-budget for interest rate rises last autumn. She made the comment in an interview with Spectator TV broadcast this afternoon (see 5.28pm), after she broke her post-premiership silence with a long article in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday about why she thinks her mini-budget crashed, forcing her removal from No 10. Keir Starmer said that she had done enough damage already and that his heart sank when he learnt she was speaking out again. (See 2.42pm.) Downing Street has declined to rule out the UK withdrawing from the European convention on human rights if it was seen as needed to stop small boat crossings, despite serious misgivings among some Conservative MPs. A union leader has accused the government of choosing to “punish” nurses after a health minister insisted there would be no re-examination of NHS pay for this year, as the health service in England faces what is expected to be the biggest strike in its history. Ministers have quietly dropped restrictions on spending controls, allowing Whitehall departments to spend millions more on external consultants. Miliband says thousands of people victims of government "negligence" on prepayment meters Turning back to prepayment meters (see 4.48pm), Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, told MPs during his urgent question that thousands of customers had been forced onto prepayment meters because the government refused to ban the practice. He said: The story of this scandal is of a government sitting on their hands and being far too slow to act. Ofgem did reviews in September and November and highlighted the problem – where was the government? [Graham Stuart, the energy minister] came to the house and refused an outright ban and now we know the result of his inaction – 30,000 people have had warrants issued for the forced installation of pre-payment meters in the last month alone, 6,000 people just in the last week alone since he said no to the ban. That is thousands of people who are victims of government negligence. How long will this pause that has finally been put in place last and would he pledge that it will not be lifted until this discredited, rotten system is properly reformed? Turning back to the European convention on human rights, Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister, has posted an interesting thread on Twitter arguing that Rishi Sunak make a huge mistake when he promised to stop the boats. It starts here. Truss says it is "unfair" to blame her mini-budget for interest rates going up The Spectator has released the transcript of its interview with Liz Truss, and the full exchange went live on Spectator TV at 5pm. Fraser Nelson, the magazine’s editor, and Katy Balls, its political editor, were interviewing Truss. It was not the most hostile interview of her career, and much of what she said in it just echoed what she said in her Sunday Telegraph article yesterday. In that piece, she argued that her mini-budget would have worked had it not been for the market instability caused by the extent to which pension funds were relying on liability driven investments (LDIs), which were very vulnerable to increases in long-term gilt yields (long-term government borrowing costs). As David Gauke, a former Tory Treasury minister, pointed out yesterday she ignored the fact that it was the mini-budget that caused the market turmoil that destabilished LDIs, not the LDIs that caused the market turmoil. Here are the lines that stood out from the interview. Truss claimed that it was “unfair” to blame the mini-budget for the hike in interest rates that happened immediately afterwards. She said: On the mortgage point I do want to address this – because we’ve been living in a very low interest rate world and mortgage rates have been going up. The reason there was a specific issue around the time we’re talking about in September, a lot of it is to do with the liability driven investments [LDIs] and the impact they had on the market. So I don’t think it’s fair to blame interest rises on what we did. I think that’s unfair. This is not the view of most economists. The Bank of England raises interest rates the day before the mini-budget but, as the Bank of England explained in a memo to the Treasury committee last autumn, long-term gilt yields – the cost of government borrowing – went up sharply after the mini-budget. And it was this that led many mortgage providers to significantly increase the interest rates they were charging UK customers. Truss claimed that she had “learnt a lot” from her time in government. Asked if she was the right person to be making the case for her low-tax, pro-growth beliefs, given how her premiership ended, she replied: Nobody would be more delighted than me if there were lots of other people coming forward and making these arguments. I would be more than delighted to have other people go out there and make the case. But the fact is there aren’t enough people making the case, full stop. And I believe that I’ve learnt a lot in my time in government, I understand what some of the pitfalls are, I’ve been through the mill on this and we do need to do things differently. She said she would not want to be PM again. Asked if she wanted the job again, she said: “No”. But she said she wanted to carry on making the arguments for her beliefs. She said: I definitely want to be part of promoting a pro-growth agenda. I definitely want to carry on as an MP. I’m positive about the future of Britain and I’m positive about the future of the Conservative party. I think we need to start building more of a strong intellectual base. But I’m not desperate to get back into Number 10, no.’ She did not apologise for anything that happened during her premiership, either to voters, some of whom were affected by the economic consequences of what happened, or to her party, which has seen its ratings plummet in the opinion polls as a result. She did not apologise in her Sunday Telegraph article either. To be fair, she was not asked in the interview to apologise. But a more self-aware politician may have concluded that some sort of apology was in order. Energy companies are being told to compensate customers who have had prepayment meters fitted "inappropriately", MPs told Energy companies have been told to pay compensation to customers who have “inappropriately had a prepayment meter fitted”, Graham Stuart, the energy minister, told MPs. Responding to an urgent question about customers being forced to have prepayment meters, including vulnerable people who were supposed to qualify for special treatment, Stuart said he was shocked by the revelations about this in the Times last week. He said: I was appalled to see reports that vulnerable customers struggling with their energy bills have had their homes invaded and pre-payment meters installed when there is a clear duty on suppliers to provide them with support. Magistrated have already been told to stop issuing warrants allowing companies to force their way into homes to install prepayment meters. Stuart said that he had discussed the situation with the head of Ofgem this morning. And he said Grant Shapps, the business secretary, “has asked suppliers to set out by … tomorrow how they will make redress to customers who have inappropriately had a prepayment meter fitted, including the possibility of compensation”. Stuart said he looked forward to seeing what suppliers were going to do. Security minister suggests government split over whether to put Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on list of terror groups Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, has signalled there are UK government splits over moves to add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to a list of banned terrorist organisations, PA Media reports. PA says: During Home Office questions, Tugendhat said both he and home secretary Suella Braverman are “as one” on taking further steps against the IRGC as MPs pressed the government to act. But Tugendhat also told the Commons “it’s not me he has to persuade in this matter” after Conservative Bob Blackman asked for the IRGC to be proscribed in its entirety. The Times last week reported plans to proscribe the IRGC have stalled after the Foreign Office raised concerns about keeping communication channels open with the Iranian regime. MPs last month unanimously supported a non-binding motion urging the UK government to make it a criminal offence to be a member of or invite support for Iran’s IRGC. Turning back to the European convention on human rights, Peter Ricketts, the former national security adviser, says that if the UK were to withdraw from the convention, it would lose all law enforcement cooperation with the EU. Both of Rishi Sunak’s immediate predecessors are speaking out today. Liz Truss has given an interview to Spectator TV that is being shown at 5pm, and Boris Johnson has just made a rare intervention in the House of Commons. Speaking during Home Office questions, Johnson defended the plan to deport people arriving on small boats to claim asylum to Rwanda, and claimed that Labour had “not the ghost of an idea” as to how to address the problem. He said: Isn’t it obvious from today’s exchanges that many of those who oppose the UK-Rwanda migration and economic development partnership have no idea about Rwanda, have probably never been there, and are wholly wrong to condescend and to disparage Rwanda in the way that they do. And, above all, they have not the ghost of an idea about how to solve the problem of cross channel gangs putting people at risk. And the difference between our side and them is we have a plan and they don’t. Tory MPs cheered, and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said Johnson had put it very well. Prepayment meters: magistrates told to stop allowing forced installations Magistrates have been ordered to stop issuing warrants allowing energy firms to force fit prepayment meters in England and Wales, my colleague Alex Lawson reports. Faisal Islam from the BBC has posted on Twitter a copy of the memo sent to magistrates by Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales. 97% of passport applications now being processed within three weeks, Braverman tells MPs In the Commons Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is taking Home Office questions. MPs have just reached the topical questions bit (when they can ask about anything, not a question tabled days in advance), and Braverman started by making a short statement about the Passport Agency. She said that last spring there were “serious concerns” about its performance. When she took office, she was determined to address this, she said. She said the system is now operating well, and that last week 99% of applications were being returned within the 10-week target deadline. And 97% of them were being returned within three weeks, she said. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, reprimanded Braverman for using question time to make a statement. He said that if she wanted to make a formal announcement, she should have scheduled a statement. He suggested he would be willing to grant an urgent question on this tomorrow. Sturgeon publishes tax returns for her time as first minister, and says she is taking £27,000 less in salary than she could Nicola Sturgeon has urged other Scottish and UK party leaders to publish their tax returns after releasing hers during her time as Scotland’s first minister. At a press briefing on Monday morning, Sturgeon said she paid the full tax on her official total salary of £163,299 – a figure which includes her MSP’s salary and ministerial wage, even though she took the salaries paid in 2008. She said Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Anas Sarwar, should “follow suit”. She said: “The reason I do this today [is] it does help with transparency.” As a political gesture announced by her predecessor Alex Salmond, Scottish National party ministers and MSPs have voluntarily forgone salary rises since 2009, donating the difference back to the government. The SNP said that meant Sturgeon would forgo £27,000 in salary this financial year – a sacrifice which still leaves her with a gross salary of £136,299, which is five times the average wage in Scotland. The SNP said its ministers had refunded £1.3m in total since 2009. Rishi Sunak, who is also due to publish his tax returns, is entitled to a salary of £80,807 as prime minister on top of his MP’s wage of £84,144; he only claims £75,440 as premier. "My heart sinks ... she has done more than enough damage to the economy" - Starmer ridicules Liz Truss"s comeback Nothing is more satisfying for an opposition leader than being able to speak up on behalf of the whole country. Downing Street did not have a great deal to say about the Liz Truss comeback this morning (see 1.01pm), and so Keir Starmer had the field to himself this morning when asked for his reaction to her return to frontline political debate. My heart sinks when I hear more from Liz Truss. She’s done more than enough damage to our economy. And, frankly, when the whole country wants to move forward, we’ve got a cost of living crisis, we’ve got people really worried about being able to pay their bills, they’re looking for a government to take them forward, and all we’ve got is failed prime ministers arguing about who was the biggest failure. That’s the last thing the country needs just right at the moment. Not everyone will agree, but there is almost certainly widespread support for Starmer’s take. Only last week a poll suggested just 6% of voters think Rishi Sunak is a worse PM than Truss, and even Conservatives have been telling journalists they wish she would shut up. The Truss intervention is a godsend for the Labour party. Starmer’s leadership is well established and there is no faction in the party seriously arguing for a different approach. But Rishi Sunak has to compete with two predecessors who are very popular with Tory activists and who have distinct policy agendas. (The Truss and Boris Johnson agendas overlap up to a point – they both want tax cuts and a hawkish foreign policy – but in other respects their brands of Conservatism are at odds.) Even if there is no realistic prospect of Truss being elected leader again (and only little chance of Johnson getting another go), the fact that they both have loyal supporters, and offer an alternative to Sunak, is hugely destabilising. Interestingly, the Tory papers are also, to some extent, split in their allegiances. Of the three most important pro-Conservative titles, the Telegraph is sympathetic to Truss, or at least her ideas, the Mail is most pro-Johnson, while Sunak is probably getting most support from the Sun. The Foreign Office has announced that the UK is sending 76 UK search and rescue specialists, four search dogs and rescue equipment to Turkey to help it deal with the aftermath of the earthquake. In a news release that uses the Turkish government’s preferred spelling of the country’s name, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, said: The UK is sending immediate support to Türkiye including a team of 76 search & rescue specialists, equipment and rescue dogs. In Syria, the UK-funded White Helmets have mobilised their resources to respond. We stand ready to provide further support as needed. More than 1,700 people are now known to have died in the earthquake. We are covering it on a separate live blog here. UK government needs "to talk and to listen" to resolve health strikes, says Welsh government minister Eluned Morgan, the Welsh government’s health minister, has told PA Media that she hopes health workers in Wales will accept the revised offer tabled at the end of last week. She also implied that, if the dispute went on into April, the extra money for the deal might no longer be available. She explained: Obviously the final decision will be by the members of these unions. But I think what’s important is that they understand that this is the only deal in town. The end of the financial year is coming very soon, and obviously the money disappears at the end of the financial year so that there is an issue for people to consider there. So I do hope that people recognise that we’ve worked really hard on this, that we are restricted in how much we can offer because of the money we get from the UK government. Morgan also said the UK government should follow the example set by the Welsh government. She said: I do think that there’s a lesson here for the UK government – UK government needs to understand that in order to get any kind of deal you need to sit down you need to talk and you need to listen. They’re not doing any of that, and I would encourage them to do that. Steve Barclay says pay talks with union should focus on next year"s offer, not current deal At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said the government wanted pay talks with the health unions to focus on next year’s pay offer, not the 2022-23 pay offer, which is what the current dispute is about. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said the same thing to journalists while on a visit to Kingston hospital in south-west London. He said: We have been discussing this coming year, from April, pay with the unions. We have this process through the pay review body, it’s an independent process and we’re keen to get the evidence so that that reflects the pressure that the NHS has been under and the wider context in terms of inflation. I don’t think it’s right to go back to last year, to last April, retrospectively, we should be looking forward to the pay review body that is taking evidence now and working constructively with the trade unions. No 10 delivers rebuke to Truss, saying it values OBR for its "credible, high quality" analysis Rishi Sunak is fond of reading long and detailed government reports. But No 10 was unable to say this morning whether or not he had ploughed through Liz Truss’s 4,000-word Sunday Telegraph article, which has been much criticised for its suggestion that almost everyone was to blame for the failure of her disastrous mini-budget apart from herself. Asked if Sunak agreed with Truss’s claim that Britain was being held back by “economic orthodoxy” that was anti-growth (she implied in the article Sunak was part of that, but did not say so explicitly), the spokesperson declined to engage with the argument. But he did implicitly slap down Truss over one aspect of her argument. In her article she criticised the Office for Budget Responsibility, saying that the way it modelled economic policy “tends to undervalue the benefits of low taxes and supply-side reforms for economic growth, and overvalue the benefits of public spending”. She said this was one reason why taxes kept going up. This [the bias in the OBR approach] inevitably puts pressure on a higher-tax and higher-spend outcome – hence the inexorable tax rises we are now seeing. At the lobby briefing, without even being asked specifically about the OBR, the spokesperson said: In broader terms, we value the scrutiny of independent bodies like the OBR. The chancellor is working closely with them in the lead-up to the spring budget, as you would expect. And they will have a role in providing independent, credible and high quality analysis. We are making the fiscal decisions to get inflation down, which in turn will help us grow the economy. And you will hear from the chancellor in more detail shortly. The prime minister at the least was I haven’t actually been able to ask him that question. So see widespread coverage. You read it I don’t ask questions about myself. Asked if the PM welcomed his predecessors contributing to the public debate, the spokesperson said: “Of course the prime minister will listen to all former prime ministers.” There are two urgent questions in the Commons after 3.30pm, both tabled by shadow cabinet ministers. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, is asking about the NHS strikes, and Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, has tabled a UQ about energy companies forcing customers to have prepayment meters. No 10 says Sunak "confident" his asylum crackdown will comply with ECHR - but won"t firmly rule out withdrawal in future At the morning lobby briefing Downing Street insisted that the bill due to be published soon intended to stop people arriving illegally in the UK on small boats from ever claiming asylum in the country would be compliant with the European convention on human rights. Asked if the government was planning to withdraw from the convention, the PM’s spokesperson said: I think there’s been a great deal of speculation. I think you’ve heard from the prime minister himself where he said, first and foremost, he wants to put an end to the exploitation of our laws through reform of that system. We will, of course, comply with all our international obligations, and we are confident the measures being worked through will tackle the problem while being compliant with the ECHR [European convention on human rights]. But none of the reports about what the proposed bill will do (like yesterday’s – see 11.20am) say the legislation will propose withdrawal from the ECHR. Instead what is being claimed is that, if the courts do subsequently block the Sunak plan on human rights ground, at that point he would consider proposing withdrawal – possibly as a pledge for the next general election. Asked about this, the spokesperson said he did not want to get into “unsourced speculation on future plans”. Asked if there were any circumstance in which Sunak would recommend withdrawal from the ECHR, the spokesperson said: As I say, I think you will see, when we set out our plans fairly shortly, that we seek to be compliant with our international obligations. Some Tories think the proper answer to this question is: No. (See 11.20am) Asked a second time if he could rule this out, the spokesperson said: There are no plans for the government to take that approach. The policy, both in terms of this and elsewhere, is to be compliant with our international obligations. Unite says it is "tantalisingly close" to agreement on pay with Welsh government On Friday the Royal College of Nursing and several other health unions called for strikes planned for Wales this week after the Welsh government made fresh proposals on pay. But Unite, which represents some ambulance staff, said it was not calling off its strike because it was still negotiating. Today Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said her union was “tantalisingly close” to a deal with the Welsh government. She said: The reason that we’re still out in Wales is that it would be disingenuous for us to put an offer to pause the strike in the full knowledge the offer was going to get rejected. What we want is not a sticking plaster – we want to have a deal on the table that will be accepted. I spoke to the health minister in Wales on a number of occasions yesterday; we’re tantalisingly close. The sticking point really is [of the] the extra 3% – half of it is on non-consolidated, so therefore it’s a one-off payment. And what we’re simply asking is to put more of that on the wages, so that people have that forever, it’s in their pay packet, because that will address some of the concerns.