Truss tax plans could cost £50bn a year without helping worst-off

Guardian analysis casts doubt on foreign secretary’s £30bn claim

- Rowena Mason

Truss plans for tax could cost nation £50bn a year without helping worst-off

Liz Truss’s emergency tax and spending pledges could cost upwards of £50bn a year, with experts warning it will fail to help the worst off deal with the rising cost of living.

Truss, the strong favourite to be the next prime minister, has promised to cancel the national insurance rise, scrap a planned increase in corporation tax, spend more on defence, and remove green levies on energy bills for households and businesses – all of which would cost billions. She has also suggested boosting free ports, which would entail tax cuts for business, and mooted an increase in the married tax allowance.

The foreign secretary has said her plans for tax cuts could cost £30bn but economists said the real figure was likely to be considerably higher. A Guardian analysis of Truss’s tax and spending policies during the campaign found the figure could top £50bn a year, while Labour said the Tory leadership campaign was full of “fantasy economics and unfunded announcements”.

At the same time, Truss is refusing to commit to any increase in benefits or further rebates on energy bills to help the poorest people struggling with higher bills in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. Rishi Sunak, her rival candidate, threw down the gauntlet yesterday by pledging to provide similar help with energy bills to his last package of measures, amounting to £400 per household and £650 for the most vulnerable – a £15bn overall package. “This winter is going to be extremely tough for families up and down the country, and there is no doubt in my mind that more support will be needed,” he said.