Liz Truss

Credentials

B.A. Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University.¹

Background

Liz Truss was elected as leader of the Conservative Party and UK prime minister on September 5, 2022² having stepped down as prime minister on October 20, 2022, 45 days after taking up the role.³

Liz Truss served as the UK‘s foreign secretary from September 2021⁴ and is a Conservative MP for South West Norfolk⁵ until losing her seat to the Labour Party in the July 2024 general election.⁶

Truss was the UK’s trade secretary from July 2019 to September 2021.⁷

Truss was also responsible for the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU and the lead negotiator for the Northern Ireland Protocol, following Lord David Frost’s resignation as Brexit Cabinet Minister in December 2021. As part of the role, Truss became the UK’s co-chair of the Partnership Council and the Joint Committee.⁸ ⁹

She was chief secretary to the Treasury between 2017 and 2019, after serving as justice secretary following a 2016 cabinet reshuffle.¹⁰

Truss served as environment secretary between 2014 and 2016.¹¹

In a 2012 interview with the New Statesman, Truss named Margaret Thatcher as her favourite British Prime Minister.¹²

Truss stood unsuccessfully in the 2001 and 2005 general elections, before being elected as a councillor in Greenwich, South East London, in 2006.¹³ ¹⁴

Earlier in her career, Truss worked as a Commercial Manager at the oil and gas company, Shell, and subsequently as Economics Director at the telecommunications company, Cable & Wireless.¹⁵ ¹⁶

She was later Deputy Director of the thinktank Reform, which advocates free market reforms of public services. While claiming to be “strictly independent and non-party” in its approach, it has been described as belonging to the modern-day conservative movement by ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie and Taxpayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott.¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰

While at Oxford University, Truss led the student Liberal Democrat Society.²¹

Environmental Policy

During the 2022 Conservative Party leadership race, Truss said she supported the UK’s 2050 net zero target but backed increased oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, and came out strongly against solar farms on agricultural land and onshore wind farms.

According to news site Politico, “as chief secretary to the Treasury in the dying days of Theresa May’s administration” Truss “is said to have opposed the 2050 net zero target, and the U.K.’s hosting of [UN climate summit] COP26.”²²

Politico quoted “a former cabinet colleague” of Truss who said that “she’s going to be largely uninterested in the environment [as PM], because that romantic part of the Conservative movement, which is significant, doesn’t spring in her breast.”²³

While environment secretary, Truss cut subsidies for solar farms, calling them “a blight on the landscape” and claiming they were harming food production. The policy turned out not to have been backed up by any evidence from her department.²⁴ ²⁵

Since her election as an MP in 2010, Truss has been a vocal supporter of Heathrow expansion, backing the third runway despite a Conservative Party manifesto pledge to reject the proposal under David Cameron. She has also strongly supported fracking, calling opposition to the industry “NIMBY“-ist.²⁶ ²⁷

Representing a rural constituency, Truss has a close relationship with the Countryside Alliance, an NGO which supports fox hunting and grouse shooting. Truss spoke at a reception organised by the CA at the 2015 Conservative Party Conference, with her reappointment as Environment Secretary after the general election having been welcomed by the group.²⁸ ²⁹

Free-Market Links

Truss has close ties to free-market groups critical of environmental policies based in and around 55 Tufton Street, having spoken at events organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Adam Smith Institute and appointed three employees of Tufton Street groups as advisors following her appointment as trade secretary.³⁰ ³¹

After her election as Prime Minister, IEA director general Mark Littlewood told Politico that Truss had spoken at IEA events more than “any other politician over the past 12 years”.³²

The cluster of think-tanks and lobby groups have historically promoted climate science denial and campaigned against policies to combat climate change. In July 2018, the IEA’s director general Mark Littlewood was filmed telling an undercover reporter from Greenpeace’s investigative unit Unearthed, posing as a prospective donor, that they could discreetly influence a report in ways that could advance their business interests, in exchange for funding.³³

In a 2022 op-ed titled, “Why my old friend Liz Truss will be the most radical British prime minister in a century”, Littlewood wrote: “It is a myth that she’s a political chameleon. She is and always has been a full-blooded free-market liberal […] she instinctively believes that the state has a greater propensity to do harm than to do good.”³⁴

In the same article, he said he and Truss had met while studying at Oxford University and suggested that her approach to tackling the energy crisis “would be to allow the price mechanism to operate freely and then consider how one might mitigate the effects.”³⁵

During a trip to the US in 2018 while chief secretary to the Treasury, Truss met with several Koch-funded libertarian thinktanks and lobby groups that have a history of climate science denial. They included: the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, ALEC, Americans for Tax Reform and Heritage Foundation.³⁶

Free Enterprise Group

Truss founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs in 2011, shortly after entering parliament. The following year, Truss caused public outrage with a book called Britannia Unchained, which she co-authored with four other MPs from the group, including now Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng and Home Secretary Priti Patel. The book recommended extreme deregulation and contained the line: “Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world”.³⁷ ³⁸

The Free Enterprise Group has been described by openDemocracy as the “parliamentary wing” of the Institute of Economic Affairs, with which the group has co-hosted numerous events. The IEA also provides administrative support to the group, including handling media enquiries.³⁹ ⁴⁰

A profile on the Conservative Home website described the Free Enterprise Group’s aims as “improving infrastructure and education, reducing taxes and regulation, and reforming public services”. The group has produced a number of reports over the years, including one in 2012 by Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng entitled “The Case for Aviation”, which recommends further airport expansion.⁴¹

Stance on Climate Change

April 18, 2024

Truss wrote in her book, Ten Years to Save the West, that “the zealous drive to net zero” — the UK’s legally binding 2050 climate target — amounts to “unilateral economic disarmament” and is “a drag on economic growth”.⁴²

She wrote: “We should abolish the Climate Change Act and instead adopt a new Climate Freedom Act that enables rather than dictates technology”, and added that “the U.S. should reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, and the EU should abandon its equivalent measures”.

Truss also advocated for increased fossil fuel extraction, advocating a mix of “oil and gas as well as nuclear and renewables”, adding: “The use of North Sea oil and gas is crucial, so there needs to be investment in that too. There also should be fracking in the UK.”

Truss also claimed that, while serving in the Treasury, she attempted to cancel the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

July 25, 2022

During the 2022 leadership contest, Truss responded to a debate question — “what three things should people change in their lives to help tackle climate change?” — by saying: “I was an environmentalist before it was fashionable. I was a teenage eco-warrior campaigning against damage to the ozone layer”.⁴³

She added:

“I’ve always taken the view that we should save our resources […] so it’s about using less, wasting less, particularly food waste, which I think is, you know, a massive problem in this country. But also the innovation that we need to get the new technology that can help us do things better, whether that’s electric vehicles, whether that’s insulation in our homes, we can all act. But what I don’t want to see is ordinary households penalised by our net zero target, so I would lift the green energy levy and cut money from people’s fuel bills, whilst looking for better ways to deliver our net zero target.”

January 5, 2015

In an interview with Parliament’s The House magazine, reported by BT News, Truss said:⁴⁴

“I fully agree that climate change is happening. I think the evidence is very strong, but this department [DEFRA]’s role is making sure we adapt to climate change and that’s taken into account in all our modelling.”⁴⁵

Key Quotes

May 25, 2024

In an interview with the Telegraph, Truss said prime minister Rishi Sunak should drop the UK’s net zero targets.⁴⁶

Truss told the Telegraph: “We [The Conservative Party] need to change the way we are governed. And the contention in my book is unless we do that, we are not going to be able to deliver the conservative policies the public actually wants such as controlling immigration, such as getting rid of the impacts of net zero.”

When the interviewer asked Truss “whether it was time for the Government to abolish all of its net zero targets”, she said, “I believe so, yes”.

September 4, 2022

In a TV interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg politics show, Truss said: “It’s also very important we use the resources in the North Sea. There’s more we can do to exploit current gas fields. I support exploring fracking in parts of the United Kingdom where that can be done.⁴⁷

“I support solar on commercial roofs, and what I would do is make it easier to put solar panels on the roofs of warehouses, on factories, on homes. But what we shouldn’t be doing is putting solar panels on productive agricultural land.

“I’m very supportive of renewables and I want us to do more on hydrogen, more on wind power, more on solar power, provided it’s in the right place, but our priority has to be energy security, and I will make sure that we do hit our net zero targets, but we need to do it in a way that protects energy security. And gas is a very important transition fuel. Gas has half the emissions of coal, it is a good fuel to use as we are transitioning to net zero.”

August 20, 2022

In an interview with the Sun on Sunday’s Political Editor Kate Fergerson, Truss said: “Britain must beef up our own energy supplies by drilling more in the North Sea, turbocharging investment in nuclear and fracking where locals want it”. She also criticised protesters like Extinction Rebellion for “stopping progress”.⁴⁸

October 20, 2014

Announcing a cut in subsidies to farmers and landowners with solar panels on their land, Truss said:⁴⁹

“I’m very concerned that a lot of our land is being taken up with solar farms.”

“We’ve already got 250 of them and we’ve got 10,000 football-pitches’ worth of new solar farms in the pipeline.”

She continued:

“Food and farming is our number-one manufacturing industry, the whole food chain represents £100bn in our economy, and it is a real problem if we are using productive agricultural land for solar farms.”⁵⁰

July 16, 2014

During her time as Deputy Director of the Reform thinktank, Truss said that energy infrastructure in Britain was being damaged by politicians’ obsession with green technology, the Guardian reported.⁵¹

“Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are being spent subsidising uneconomic activity.”⁵²

August 30, 2012

In an interview with Politics.co.uk regarding the expansion of Heathrow Airport, Truss said:⁵³

“We do need a hub airport in the south-east of England… If you want to have a hub airport three runways probably isn’t enough. If we’re imaginative about Heathrow, I don’t see why we can’t build four runways there.”

Responding to the accusation that building a third runway would break the Conservatives’ manifesto promise, Truss said:

“There is not going to be a third runway going to be built in this parliament, so as far as I’m concerned we’re honouring the pledge in that manifesto.”⁵⁴

Key Actions

February 6, 2024

Truss announced that she had formed a new faction within the Conservative Parliamentary Party called “Popular Conservatism,” the launch of which contained attacks on net zero and environmental groups. A branded leaflet handed out at the event, under the heading “what we stand for”, stated: “End net zero zealotry and promote energy pragmatism to provide both security of supply and low prices”.⁵⁵

Members of the group include a number of outspoken critics of net zero policies, including David Frost, board member of The Global Warming Policy Foundation, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage. The group’s director, Mark Littlewood, was director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which has been funded by BP every year between 1967-2018, and whose members have consistently pushed for further fossil fuel extraction.

September 8, 2022

Truss ended the UK’s moratorium on fracking, telling MPs in the House of Commons: “We will end the moratorium on extracting our huge reserves of shale – which could get gas flowing as soon as six months – where there is local support for it.”⁵⁶

The fracking moratorium was enacted in 2019 after a scientific study by the Oil and Gas Authority warned it was not possible to rule out “unacceptable” consequences for communities near fracking sites, or to predict the magnitude of earthquakes fracking could trigger.⁵⁷

August 30, 2022

The Times reported that one of Liz Truss’ first acts as the next UK Prime Minister, if she wins, as expected, will be to approve a series of oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea. The article suggests that as many as 130 licences will be issued.⁵⁸

August 11, 2022

At a Conservative party leadership hustings event held in Cheltenham, Truss said: “I think one of the most depressing sights when you’re driving through England is seeing fields that should be full of crops or livestock, full of solar panels.”⁵⁹

Truss also said that after tax cuts, she would focus on fixing the UK’s long-term energy supply issues with possible solutions including support for fracking and nuclear power.

At the same event, when asked about the possibility of a windfall tax on energy companies’ profits, Truss said: “I don’t think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it’s become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem.⁶⁰

“One thing I absolutely don’t support is a windfall tax. I think it’s a Labour idea, it’s all about bashing business, and it sends the wrong message to international investors and to the public.”

July 16, 2022

In an interview with the Telegraph, Liz Truss suggested that she would lift the UK’s ban on fracking to allow shale gas extraction if she were elected as Prime Minister.⁶¹

She said: “On the subject of fracking, I think it depends on the local area, and whether there is support in the local area for it. But I certainly think we need to be doing all we can to lower the cost of energy for consumers.”

November 25, 2021

In her role as Foreign Secretary, Truss announced that the British development finance institution would be relaunched as British International Investment (BII) to invest in infrastructure and technology in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.⁶²

The government’s announcement stated that the BII “builds on the Prime Minister’s commitments at COP26 to help developing countries take advantage of clean technology and grow their economies sustainably,” claiming that the BII will deliver “billions in climate financing for projects like solar power, sustainable transport and disaster-resilient infrastructure over the next 5 years.”⁶³

January 13, 2021

Truss was reported to be considering including provisions such as corporate transparency on climate change and measures to mitigate air pollution in trade negotiations with the US.⁶⁴

March 7–10, 2019

Truss spoke at the “World Forum” of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the richest think tanks in the U.S with a history of climate science denial. According to the Parliament’s Register of Members’ Financial Interests, the AEI spent over £8,200 on expenses for Truss to attend the event.⁶⁵

January 7, 2019

While Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Truss caused alarm with promises to axe “white elephant projects” including low-carbon initiatives, Business Green reported.⁶⁶

June 26, 2018

Truss criticised then Environment Secretary Michael Gove‘s proposed controls on wood-burning stoves, calling them symptomatic of the “hot air” coming out of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.⁶⁷

January 29, 2015

Truss told the House of Commons that there were “no plans” for the release of an unredacted version of a government report on the impacts of fracking on the rural economy. She said that the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) should never have produced the report, claiming it was the responsibility of the Department for Energy and Climate Change.⁶⁸