Liz Truss has refused to commit to appointing an ethics adviser if she becomes prime minister, saying she has “always acted with integrity”.
At Tory leadership meetings in Birmingham on Tuesday night, Truss refused to answer directly whether he would appoint someone to the role, instead saying he would “make sure the right apparatus was in place for people to report”.
The previous ethics adviser, Christopher Geidt, resigned in June after admitting the prime minister may have broken the ministerial code over the Partygate scandal.
After being pressed on the issue of a new ethics adviser several times, Truss said: “I think one of the problems we have in this country in the way we approach things is that we have numerous independent advisers and bodies, and rules and regulations.
“For me it’s about understanding the difference between right and wrong, and I’m someone who has always acted with integrity. […] and that’s what I would do as prime minister.”
During the schools, hosted by Time Radio, Truss also backed the creation of more grammar schools and said he will redirect money from the Health and Social Care Tax away from the NHS and into social care.
Rishi Sunak, his rival for No.10, suggested that UK aid programs should be cut to countries that refused to accept deportations of “failed asylum seekers” to Britain.
He said emergency humanitarian aid would remain but “ongoing aid programs in countries that we have had for years” would be withdrawn.
Sunak also warned that “millions of people will face the risk of destitution” if more is not done to help them with their energy bills this winter.
The former chancellor hit out at Truss’s policies, saying: “I think unfunded tax cuts are wrong and you know what? [Margaret Thatcher’s] Chancellor Nigel Lawson agrees with me, the head of his policy unit agrees with me, Norman Lamont agrees with me.”
“I think it will be a moral failure of the Conservative government and I don’t think the British people will ever forgive us,” he added.
Truss defended himself against accusations that his economic proposals were dangerous, criticizing what he called “Treasury orthodoxy”.
The Foreign Secretary told the Tory audience: “All this language of ‘unfunded’ tax cuts implies the static model, the so-called abacus economics that the Treasury orthodoxy has been promoting since years ago, but it hasn’t worked in our economy because what we’ve ended up with is high taxes, high spending, and low growth.
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“This is not a sustainable model for the future of the UK.”
Both candidates commented on the death of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who died in a shooting in Liverpool on Monday night.
Truss said “there is a serious problem in this country with gun crime” and that she would introduce police league tables if elected, while Sunak said she called her family to talk to her daughter when she first heard about the shooting.
“I thought, ‘She was nine years old, she’s the same age as my youngest daughter,'” the former chancellor said. “Horrible. I called my wife and talked to my daughter.”
He added that he would “just put 20,000 more” police on the streets to fight crime.