Liz Truss Tory conference speech disrupted by Greenpeace protesters; PM claims cutting taxes ‘right morally and economically’ – as it happened

• Liz Truss has promised Britons she has “got your back” and set out a plan for “growth, growth and growth” in a conference speech disrupted by protesters asking who voted for her plan. My colleague Peter Walker has five takeaways from the speech here.

• Truss has been criticised by a leading conservation charity for implying that all environmentalists are part of a malign “anti-growth coalition”. (See 2.21pm.) As my colleague Helena Horton explains, this came at the end of a conference in which environmentalists and their concerns were routinely criticised or ignored.

• Suella Braverman’s plan to stop people entering the UK through irregular routes from claiming asylum could be in breach of the refugee convention, the United Nations’ refugee agency has said.

Here is my colleague Aubrey Allegretti’s take on Liz Truss’s speech.

And here is an extract.

The prime minister’s 35-minute address contained no new policy announcements, and only the gentlest of nods to the division that has rocked the first few weeks of her premiership, with little of the contrition that some were hoping for.

But it did the job, and almost all of those leaving the conference centre will have departed with no worse view of their leader than they had the day before.

One cabinet minister reflected that the speech “won’t be remembered”, and several other members of the government greeted it with a collective shrug of the shoulders.

According to new YouGov polling, only 7% of people think the Conservative party is united. But 45% of people see Labour as united.

The same poll shows that by the end of their party conference, the Tories were seen as more divided than before. But Labour came out of its party conference looking significantly less divided than before.

Businesses that paid £400 per head for a dinner with ministers at the Tory conference were left disappointed, the BBC’s Ione Wells and Paul Twinn report. Here’s an extract from their story.

The business representative said a minister who was meant to be on their table turned up late, and said those on other tables didn’t show up at all, or left early.

They added that the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, did turn up and said a few words, and spoke to every table.

The source also said that “most people’s reflections” were that the reception after the equivalent business event at last week’s Labour conference was very positive, whereas businesses said they did not “feel the love” at this one and the organisation felt “complacent”.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Liz Truss’s speech failed to stop the Tory conference being a disaster. In his response to it, he said:

The Conservative party conference has been a disaster for families and the economy. Liz Truss has only managed to add to the sense of failure with her speech.

The Conservatives have lost control of the economy causing eye-watering mortgage payments, soaring inflation and an ever-deepening cost of living emergency.

Liz Truss is out of touch and doesn’t seem to care about the damage her government is causing the country. The only way to solve this crisis is to get the Conservatives out of power.

Here is the Guardian’s Comment panel on Liz Truss’s speech. There are contributions from Mick Lynch, Polly Toynbee, Sahil Dutta, Owen Jones, Fatima Ibrahim and Isabel Hardman.

The Institute of Economic Affairs, a libertarian thinktank, sounded surprisingly underwhelmed in its response to Liz Truss’s speech. Truss has been a strong supporter of the IEA, and much of her policy agenda overlaps with what the IEA has been calling for. But in a press release responding to the speech, Mark Littlewood, the IEA director general, just said:

During her leadership campaign Truss spoke about ‘delivery, delivery, delivery’.

She now needs to return to this theme if she’s going to achieve today’s message of ‘growth, growth, growth’.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, another free-market thinktank arguing for a smaller state, also said it was up to Truss to deliver on the philosophy she set out. In its response to the speech, John O’Connell, its chief executive, said:

The prime minister was right to give both barrels to the enemies of enterprise.

To go for growth, Britain has to break free from the shackles of our gruelling tax system and the sluggish status quo.

Truss must now put words into action to tackle the cost of government crisis.

The thinktanks may be alarmed at indications that Truss is retreating from her libertarian agenda. The IEA called for the abolition of the 45% top rate of income tax – a move included in the mini-budget, but dropped on Monday after a revolt at party conference.

5 Oct 202210.50 EDT

'Sky News better at paying for cab' - how Truss's BBC jibe may have missed its mark

Ben Quinn

Liz Truss drew cheers from the Tory faithful by listing her enemies in an “anti-growth coalition” who, she said in her conference speech, took taxis from north London townhouses to BBC studios “to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo”.

But ironically, one of the biggest complaints of BBC producers is that they can’t get north Londoners into cabs to defend the status quo – because the UK’s pundit class has become so used to doing much less time-consuming Zoom interviews from their spare rooms.

And unlike Sky and other channels, the BBC has a growing reputation for being stingy on appearance fees – the modest sums that are used to entice pundits on air.

Asked about the comments made by Truss, the BBC was reluctant to engage – perhaps weary of crossing swords with a Conservative leader who has previously mocked the broadcaster by saying that it did not have the “high quality standards” of GB News.

A BBC spokesperson said that any questions about the prime minister’s speech should be for No 10.

Most broadcasters – ranging from the BBC and Sky News through to newcomers such as GB News – routinely pay for taxis for guests to travel to and from their studios, particularly for early-morning and late-night slots. But one intermittent “talking head” on BBC programmes said that the broadcaster had “got mean with taxis”.

“Sky News much better for a cab, but to be fair it would take about a week to get there on your own,” they added, referring to the channel’s headquarters in Isleworth, west London.

In her speech Liz Truss also described “vested interests dressed up as thinktanks” as part of the “anti-growth coalition”. (See 12.37pm.) On Radio 4’s World at One Paul Scully, the local government minister, was asked if he knew what she was referring to. “I’m not too sure to be honest,” Scully replied. “Yeah, I wasn’t sure.”

Of course Truss herself was deputy director of a thinktank, Reform, before she became an MP.

And some of the thinktanks that back her most enthusiastically, such as the Institute for Economic Affairs, do not disclose all the sources of their funding, leading to claims they operate on behalf of “vested interests”.

Liz Truss included “militant unions” as part of what she described as the “anti-growth coalition”. (See 12.37pm.) That prompted this response from Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary. Graham said:

Liz Truss says she is focused on growth, but if she really wanted to help the UK economy she would be helping us get more money into the pockets of workers. She would not dismiss as ‘militant’ the nurses, drivers, refuse collectors, dockers and the tens of thousands of workers taking action on pay up and down the country so they can pay their bills and defend their families.

What is the point of a bigger pie if bad bosses get to divide it? Unite is dealing with a number of profiteering companies right now who are raking it in, while trying to impose pay cuts on their workers.

5 Oct 202210.15 EDT

Lisa O'Carroll

Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker has taken a swipe at former Lord Frost over re-started Brexit talks.

He took Frost to task after Frost retweeted his support for an article criticising Baker for apologising to the Irish and the EU earlier this week.

Baker complained that Frost and the author of the article had ignored his parallel pledge to ensure the UK demands that trade barriers were removed between NI and GB.

“Neither of you seem to have bothered with my comments on resolve” to push the UK position. “But the EU and the Irish have,” he pointed out.

“And on red lines, the point is not to discuss them in public. Not to have none,” added Baker in an indication that talks will go into a “tunnel” with little commentary in the coming weeks.

Baker is meeting Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney in London on Friday.

The pound has wiped out its gains from earlier in the day, falling in value against the US dollar following the prime minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference, PA Media reports. PA says:

Sterling dipped by 1.4% to $1.1312 shortly after Liz Truss told the conference that the government was making “difficult but necessary” choices to stimulate economic growth.

The pound had hit a three-week high against the dollar in early session trading, taking it to around $1.147 dollars.

It followed a short-lived rebound on Tuesday after reports that the chancellor could be bringing forward the highly anticipated fiscal plan and official economic forecast.

But concerns that the government has taken on too much debt while ploughing ahead with sweeping tax cuts have continued to spook investors since the unveiling of last week’s mini-budget.

Ten-year gilt yields rose by nearly 4% on Wednesday afternoon after Ms Truss’s speech at the party conference.

Commenting on the moves, Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said:

As prime minister Liz Truss took to the stage to try and shore up her support among her party and the country, the pound fell further back and government borrowing costs rose slightly.

She may have hoped that her triple promise of growth would have calmed markets further but with nothing new to offer on the table, her words have not had the desired effect so far.

The pound dipped below $1.14 dollars, hovering around $1.135 dollars, and 10-year gilt yields lifted a little to a whisker under 4%.

The speech will do little to quell dissent over worries that public services will bear the brunt of the tax cuts plans.

The Green party has also attacked Liz Truss for what she said about the “anti-growth coalition”. (See 2.21pm.) Zack Polanski, the party’s deputy leader, said:

This government is determined to wreck the climate with a dangerous drive to growth that is based on greater investment in fossil fuels that are destroying the planet.

Liz Truss used her speech today to try and build a coalition of ‘enemies’ that she claims are holding the country back. This is divisive and false.

We stand for the planet and for the people. There is no climate justice without social justice, and no future for the planet with this dead-end government.