Tory leadership - live: Truss tax cuts would not help vulnerable pensioners, Sunak says

We are pausing our live updates for this evening, come back tomorrow for more coverage of the leadership race.

Boris Johnson has declared he is “absolutely confident” that his successor as prime minister “will have the fiscal firepower and the headroom to continue to look after people”.

Speaking at a Downing Street reception on Tuesday, he said he is “certain” that whoever wins the Tory leadership election will want to make announcements about how they will “further help people” struggling to get by.

It comes as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak took part in hustings on Tuesday evening in Darlington, where they spoke about their plans to help people amid the cost-of-living crisis.

Mr Johnson was speaking to people he has given Points of Light awards, a scheme which recognises “outstanding individual volunteers”.

Tony Hudgell, seven, who had to have both his legs amputated in 2017 as a result of abuse suffered at the hands of his birth parents, was among those honoured at the event.

Mr Johnson said that “whoever [his successor] may be” he is “absolutely certain” that they “will be wanting to make some more announcements” in autumn about financial help for people during the winter.

He added: “I just want you to know that I’m absolutely confident that we will have the fiscal firepower and the headroom to continue to continue to look after people as we’ve done throughout.”

Liz Truss has appeared to insinuate that her leadership Rishi Sunak’s economic plans were like those of former Labour PM Gordon Brown.

She repeated her economic pledges made earlier in the Darlington hustings, and went on to say that she would be against the idea of taxing people more and giving money back via “handouts”.

Ms Truss said: “The first thing we should do as Conservatives is help people have more of their own money.

“What I don’t support is taking money off people in tax, and then giving it back to them in handouts.

“That to me is Gordon Brown economics. Frankly, we had years of that under Labour and what we got was a slow-growth economy.”

Hustings host Tom Newton Dunn asked Ms Truss to answer “yes or no” to his question about whether she was likening Mr Sunak’s economic plans to those of Mr Brown.

She appeared to dodge the question by saying “I was actually responding to your question Tom,” adding that she wanted to “grow the pie” rather than “sharing out a fixed pie” via “handouts”.

Rishi Sunak has been asked about energy bills potentially rising above £4,000 a year by early 2023.

The former chancellor acknowledged that the situation is “really really serious” and that people “should be under no illusion about how difficult it’s going to be” during the winter.

He said it’s the duty of a “compassionate” Conservative government to help people through the crisis but only pledged more “targeted support” for “the most vulnerable” who are on low incomes if he becomes prime minister that will be paid for by “efficiency savings”.

Tax cuts alone are not good enough for pensioners who will not benefit from such a policy, he said about his rival Liz Truss’ pledges.

Mr Sunak said everyone else – who he said could find the situation “manageable” as they are not on the lowest incomes – may be able to benefit through potential cuts to VAT on energy bills.

Liz Truss has pledged to “protect single-sex spaces” in what appears to be an attempt to out-do Rishi Sunak on his earlier comment about transgender self-identification.

She said: “I’m a straight-talking Yorkshire woman. I know that a woman is a woman.

“I can see that people in Darlington understand that. Believe me, there are some people in Whitehall that don’t.

“What I will make sure of is that our single-sex spaces are protected. That domestic violence shelters are protected, and that we are standing up for women’s rights.”

Earlier, her rival Mr Sunak said that he wants to “stand up to this leftie woke culture that seems to want to cancel our histories, our values, and our women.”

On migration, Liz Truss said that “appalling people traffickers are creating terrible illegal immigration across the English channel.”

She added: “I worked with Priti Patel on the Rwanda scheme, it is the right scheme.

“But we need to expand it to more countries and legislate so that the British bill of rights is not overruled by the ECHR and we are able to control our own borders.”

Her pledge was met with a long round of applause by the Tory members in the audience.

“Now is not the time for business as usual,” as the UK is more likely to fall into recession than countries such as France and Ireland – Liz Truss told Tory members in Darlington.

She said: “We need to do things differently. And that’s what I would do, have a bold plan for growth.”

The foreign secretary’s ideas include getting EU laws “off the statute books by the end of 2023”, lowering taxes such as National Insurance, an “immediate moratorium on the green energy levy to cut people’s fuel bills”, keeping “corporation tax low”, and “low-tax enterprise zones” such as freeports.

Liz Truss has now taken the stage.

Inflation is “the enemy”, said Rishi Sunak who pledged – while taking a dig at his rival Liz Truss – that he will “always help those who need help with the cost of living.”

He pledged to cut VAT on energy bills from the autumn, and said that he would “go further”. Earlier, it was reported that he hinted at additional support for Britons to pay their energy bills during the colder months.

At the hustings in Darlington, he said: “But what I won’t do is pursue policies that risk making inflation worse and last far longer – especially if those policies simply amount to borrowing tens and tens of billions of pounds, putting them on the country’s credit card and asking our kids and grandkids to pick up the tab.”

This is understood to be a jab toward Ms Truss, whose plans to cut tax had garnered criticism that her policies would see increased borrowing.

“It’s not responsible, and its certainly not conservative, he said before pledging to “responsibly” cut income and business tax.

Rishi Sunak has pledged at the Darlington hustings that he wants to “finally get a grip” on small boats of migrants crossing the Channel.

He said: “For too long all of us have been watching on our TV screens scenes, that are simply unacceptable, of people coming here illegally.

“Now with my plan, under my leadership, we’ll finally get a grip on that situation, stop the boats, restore trust, and take back control of our borders.”