Liz Truss ‘considered scrapping cancer treatment on the NHS’ to plug mini-Budget blackhole

A new book about the former prime minister’s time in office reveals what happened behind the scenes in the aftermath of her mini-Budget

Liz Truss considered scrapping cancer treatment on the NHS to plug the fiscal hole caused by her mini-Budget, a book has claimed.
The former prime minister is said to have mulled over the move with Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor at the time, after the pound slumped and interest rates rose in the wake of her tax-cutting mini-Budget.
The claims were made in the latest book by Sir Antony Seldon about Ms Truss’ 49 days in Downing Street called ‘Truss at 10: How Not to Be a Prime Minister’.
In an extract first reported by The Independent, the author wrote that Alex Boyd, one of Ms Truss’ senior advisers, “was told that Truss and Kwarteng were thinking they could still sort out the black hole with severe cuts”. 
The book continues: “We’ve been told that they’re looking at stopping cancer treatment on the NHS.”
Mr Boyd allegedly responded “is she being serious”, while other aides claimed she had “lost the plot”.
They told Sir Anthony: “She’s shouting at everyone that ‘We’ve got to find the money’. When we tell her it can’t be done, she shouts back: ‘It’s not true. The money is there. You go and find it.’”
Mr Kwarteng told The Independent: “I wasn’t involved in any conversations about restricting healthcare, but that doesn’t mean the prime minister and her team didn’t discuss this.”
Mr Kwarteng was sacked by Ms Truss just 38 days into the job, amid the chaotic fall-out from the Budget.
Sir Anthony also wrote that Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Cabinet minister at the time, tried to persuade Ms Truss to make him chancellor, rather than Mr Kwarteng.
Among his proposals to the then-prime minister was a stunt to promote nuclear energy, which he suggested could involve getting “a nuclear submarine to dock at Liverpool and plug it into the grid”, the book claimed.
The idea was dismissed by Simon Case, the Cabinet secretary, as a “non-starter” as “the subs are needed in operations”.
It emerged last year that Sir Jacob, who became business secretary in Ms Truss’ administration, also proposed a “flat tax” for all workers of 20 per cent of their income.
The 45 per cent additional rate of tax, that the former prime minister tried to abolish, and the 40 per cent higher rate would have been axed. Mr Kwarteng rejected Sir Jacob’s plans.
Last month, research by the Bank of England suggested that the selling of risky products from pension funds in the wake of the mini-Budget was equally responsible for the rise in bond yields, which caused tremors in the market.
Sir Anthony wrote that Mr Kwarteng warned Ms Truss that “they will come for you” if she sacked him, according to an exclusive extract in The Times last week. She reportedly replied “they are already coming for me”.
But despite the revelations from his latest book, the biographer said that Ms Truss was a better prime minister than her predecessor, Boris Johnson.
Sir Anthony, who also wrote a book on Mr Johnson’s time in Downing Street, told The Times: “She was undoubtedly clever and had objectives that she passionately believed in and wanted to achieve.
“There was a moral seriousness about her desire to stimulate growth in the economy and she was utterly consistent in that.”
But he said Mr Johnson “had a total lack of integrity and was simply constitutionally unfit to be prime minister. He was not capable of understanding what the job was and was consumed by frivolity.”
A spokesman for Ms Truss declined to comment.
Sir Jacob was approached for comment.