What we learned from the Birmingham Conservative hustings

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Rhi Storer - Local Democracy Reporter | Friday 26th August 2022 2:29pm

Conservative leadership hopefuls Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss arrived in Birmingham this week to set out their pitch before Tory party members.

Here are five things we learned — or didn’t — from the event.

Truss pledges to bring back grammar schools

Truss says she’s a “big fan” of grammar schools and wants to introduce new grammar and free schools. When asked by an audience member, she said children across the country should have the opportunity to attend grammar schools: “We must allow the good schools to expand and set up more branches.”

Ms Truss had previously told Conservative Home, a website for Tory party members, she would back lifting the ban on new selective schools that was imposed by Tony Blair in 1998. Her own children attend a grammar school.

The South West Norfolk MP, and current foreign secretary, had previously attended a comprehensive school – Roundhay – and has criticised the Leeds school for failing children, who she described as “let down by low expectations”. But Martin Pengelly, an editor for The Guardian who also attended Roundhay, said the school still sits on “great green oceans of fields marked out for football, rugby and hockey”.

Truss’s raid on NHS budgets if elected has backfired 

£13 billion earmarked for the NHS to catch up on delayed treatment after the coronavirus pandemic would be diverted to help the crisis in social care, according to Ms Truss. The money, raised from higher national insurance contributions brought in under Boris Johnson, was always intended to be shifted to social care in later years.

At the hustings, she said: “I would spend that money in social care. Quite a lot has gone to the NHS. I would give it to local authorities. We have people in beds in the NHS who would be better off in social care. So put that money into social care.”

She claimed NHS leaders are having difficulty navigating “the number of layers the organisation has to go through to get things done”.

He told The Guardian: “Liz Truss’s comments are welcome recognition that the lack of social care capacity has a knock-on impact on other health and care services, but it’s hard to see how the NHS could have this funding removed without it impacting the standards of care patients receive.

“The unfortunate reality for whoever takes over as prime minister is that robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a sustainable solution to the health and care crisis.”

Sunak had the biggest applause but disagrees with Truss on tax

Mr Sunak had a much slicker profile on stage at the NEC, and won the crowd over with his polished answers and willingness to call out Truss supporters on their economic stance.

He said “direct financial assistance” is the best way to help pensioners and people on low incomes – rather than tax cuts, as Ms Truss is proposing. By not providing direct support during the cost of living crisis, he argued the Conservatives would be driving a “moral failure” that risks “pushing literally millions of people” into destitution.

Ms Truss supports tax cuts. She promised to hold a cost of living Budget upon becoming PM, which would reverse the National Insurance rise and suspend green levies on energy bills.

But this was downgraded to an “emergency fiscal event” rather than a formal Budget – removing the need for updated economic forecasts – at the hustings.

Rishi Sunak’s campaign suggested Ms Truss was downgrading the Budget because she could not afford the tax cuts she has promised. 

In the Sunday Telegraph this month, Ms Truss said: “I would hit the ground running by bringing in an emergency budget, charting a firm course to get our economy growing in order to help fund our public services and NHS.”

Truss would not appoint an ethics advisor, but Sunak would

Ms Truss came under criticism for her statement that she would not commit to appointing an independent ethics adviser.

She said: “For me, it’s about understanding the difference between right and wrong. I have always acted with integrity… I don’t think you can outsource ethics.”

The government has been without an ethics adviser after Lord Geidt resigned in protest of decisions which may have constituted “deliberate breaches by the United Kingdom of its obligations under international law, given the government’s widely publicised openness to this”.

Prior to standing down, Lord Geidt had earlier said he had considered resigning over Boris Johnson’s response to his Partygate fine for breaking coronavirus lockdown rules. Lord Geidt was only appointed to the role in April this year, after five months of no one being in the post.

Mr Sunak on the other hand, said he would, adding: “I have said already very clearly that I would reappoint the independent adviser on ethics, and I would make sure they have the powers and responsibilities to hold people to account.”

Truss may be to blame for sewage discharge in Britain’s rivers and seas

Ms Truss has been accused of presiding over budget cuts to the Environment Agency. At the hustings in Birmingham, Ms Truss was asked about her decision to cut £235m from Environment Agency funding when she was environment secretary, amid concerns about sewage in Britain’s waterways.

Asked if the funding cuts were a mistake, she said she was a “great believer” in efficiency, adding “Believe me, there were things that the Environment Agency were doing that they shouldn’t be doing.”

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