He was forced to defend himself over whether the UK should be doing more trade with China, why it did not increase defense spending and why it failed to act when colleagues in the Treasury warned him about the scale of the Covid loan scam. Ms Truss told the former chancellor that raising taxes now would “stifle economic growth” and “prevent us from getting the revenue we need to pay down the debt”. He said: “Under your plans, it is predicted that we will have a recession because you have raised taxes. It limits growth, prevents companies from investing and takes money out of people’s pockets. This is no way to grow the economy in a recession.” Mr Sunak hit back, saying the country had gone through “one pandemic every century with all the damage it did to the economy”. He added: “I would love to stand here and say, ‘I’m going to cut this tax, this tax and another tax’, and say everything will be fine – but you know what? It won’t happen. This something for nothing economy is not conservative, it is socialism.”
