FORMER Brexit minister Lord David Frost has said that the Government must increase state benefits in line with inflation.
Backing Penny Mourdant’s call he told GB News: “I’m going to say something which I don’t say very often, which is I agree with Penny Mordaunt 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.”
Speaking to Gloria De Piero on GB News, he added: “The government is trying to do the right thing, there’s no doubt we should be going for growth and trying to improve economic prospects. But for the last 15-20 years, nobody has really talked much about free market economics, nobody’s talked much about how you get economies to grow and what that means, what’s going to happen.
“You can’t just land people, suddenly, with a lot of change and reform and expect them to like it, you’ve got to build the coalition, you’ve got to work out which elements of this you can get through and which you can’t and try and bring people with you.
“And that takes time, so much more time explaining, persuading, choosing the battles, getting things in the right direction, without rushing at everything in the first few days.”
On the proposal to remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, he added: “It’s controversial, it affects only a few people, nobody is worse off because bankers get bigger bonuses. In fact, they’re better off because they pay more, they pay more tax in the UK.
“That’s one of those things that, explained well, makes sense. But of course, it’s not fundamental to the project, so the important thing is structural reform and change and boosting growth more broadly.”
Lord Frost said: “I think it is unhelpful to do things which are aimed at destabilising Liz Truss. She’s just won a leadership election, we had a clear choice between Rishi’s version of economics and Liz’s. She won.
“Destabilising her does not make sense, but I do think that it’s right for Liz and her team, which is quite inexperienced, the team around to, to listen and to reach out and take advice from people who are supportive and want to avoid getting into these unnecessary confrontations.”
He added: “Of course, the U-turn on the 45p rate has led people to think that other things might be up for grabs and so it’s producing this. This affects people piling in…you need to persuade, you need to be clear.
“You need to explain that it’s not just communication, you’ve got to get the right decisions and the right policies, but when you know what they are, you’ve got to explain them and bring people along. And when people don’t understand, they’ll fill the space themselves.”
He said: “People were impressed with her during the leadership campaign and…some people said at the start she was a bit wooden that seemed to disappear and she was pretty good. People reacted to that.
“We just need to see a little bit more of that, a bit more kind of spontaneity and, explaining, telling, bringing people along, telling it like it is not repeating scripts.”
