Penny Mordaunt tells Truss raising benefits ‘makes sense’ as inflation increases

Liz Truss has been told by a member of her Cabinet that it “makes sense” for benefits to rise in line with inflation.

Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons and a former Conservative Party leadership contender, told Times Radio that she has “always supported” both pensions and welfare support rising alongside inflation.

The Prime Minister is facing backlash from areas of the Conservative Party over speculation that the Government could oversee a real-term cut to benefits in a bid to reduce public spending.

Truss has thus far declined to say whether or not welfare payments will be increased in line with rising inflation.

This has caused concern from some senior ex-ministers and backbenchers after the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

Mordaunt today spoke on the issue, stating that benefits should “keep pace” with inflation.

She said: “I have always supported, whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system, keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before and so have a lot of my colleagues.

“But we do need to look at where we can make efficiency savings, just because of the cost challenges on those departments’ budgets.”

She suggested more detail on welfare will be released in the “coming weeks”, saying that Truss is committed to the triple lock on pensions to safeguard payments against inflation.

“Both on welfare but also on the pension lock, for example, that we brought in, the older you are, the higher your cost of living,” Mordaunt continued.

“These things were brought in for a reason. The Prime Minister has been committed to that.

“Obviously, we want to make sure people are looked after, we want to make sure that people are able to pay their bills, we have a huge success story on getting people off welfare and into work.

“So we’re not about trying to help people with one hand and take it away with another.

“Just like households and businesses are facing these cost challenges, so are government departments and the services that they run. All that needs to be looked at and it will be brought forward in the proper way and the Cabinet will be involved in that.

“And you can expect to be hearing about that more in the coming weeks.”

Mordaunt said the Prime Minister wants to “reset Cabinet to be what it should be”.

“She wants Cabinet to be a forum where we can really kick the tyres on policy, we can have frank discussions that aren’t then leaked. And Cabinet hasn’t really worked like that for a while.”