Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss has dropped a plan to link public sector pay to local living costs, just hours after it was announced. Her campaign team announced a proposal for regional pay boards, saying this could save nearly £9 billion a year. The idea attracted criticism from unions, Labour and some Tories. But now, Ms Truss says she “never had any intention of changing the terms and conditions of teachers and nurses” and that she “will not be going ahead with the regional pay boards.” Speaking to Today’s Mishal Husain, Conservative former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis defended Truss’s civil service pay U-turn by suggesting it was “never the case” that the Tory leadership contender had planned to cut public sector pay.

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