Rishi Sunak vows to put UK on ‘crisis footing’ if he becomes PM

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Rishi Sunak has said he would put the UK on a “crisis footing” from his first day as prime minister.

In a speech in Grantham on Saturday, the Lincolnshire home town of Margaret Thatcher, Sunak will try to move the debate on from tax cuts to the NHS by pledging to put the health service on a “war footing” with a vaccines-style taskforce set up to drive down the “emergency” of “massive backlogs”.

Meanwhile, his Tory leadership contender rival Liz Truss has vowed to review all EU laws retained after Brexit by the end of next year in a “red tape bonfire” if she becomes prime minister, and to scrap or replace those that are deemed to hinder UK growth.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, had pushed for a similar cliff-edge deadline to tear up 2,400 pieces of legislation, but two and a half years later, in June 2026. His plan prompted a cabinet row over feasibility, given the scheduled cull of a fifth of civil service numbers, or about 90,000 jobs.

Experts and union leaders said Truss’s proposals would be hugely difficult to achieve in the context of civil service cuts, with warnings it could end up becoming a “bonfire of rights”.

Truss and Sunak have begun a blitz of policy announcements in an attempt to edge ahead in the Conservative leadership runoff. Ballot papers will start arriving on party members’ doormats in little more than a week, although they have until 2 September to vote.

The pair, who made it through an initial stage of voting by MPs, will take part in a series of hustings events for members, starting in Leeds on Thursday. They will also go head to head in a televised debate on Monday.

In Grantham on Saturday, Sunak will stress his Thatcherite credentials. Warning against “privatisation by the back door”, he will announce plans to eliminate one-year NHS waiting times six months earlier than planned by September 2024, and to get overall numbers falling by next year.

“Waiting times for everything from major surgery to a visit to the GP are at record levels. Millions of people are waiting for life-saving cancer screening, major surgeries and consultations,” he will say.

“People shouldn’t have to make a choice with a gun to their head. If we do not immediately set in train a radically different approach the NHS will come under unsustainable pressure and break.”

Sunak told the Times the UK needed to be on a “crisis footing” to deal with inflation and a host of other challenges.

“They’re challenges that are staring us in the face and a business-as-usual mentality isn’t going to cut it in dealing with them. So from day one of being in office I’m going to put us on a crisis footing,” the former chancellor said.

“Having been inside government I think the system just isn’t working as well as it should,” he is quoted as saying. “And the challenges that I’m talking about, they’re not abstract, they’re not things that are coming long down the track.”

In newspaper interviews this weekend, both candidates also double down on the economic policies that have so far provided the major dividing line of the campaign.

“What I worry about is the inflation we’re seeing now becoming entrenched for longer,” Sunak said. “That’s the risk we need to guard against. If that happens, it will be incredibly damaging for millions across the UK. The cost for families is going to be enormous.”

He also suggested the foreign secretary’s plans could cause interest rates to rise, while rejecting the suggestion he is running a “project fear”.

But in an interview with the Telegraph, Truss defended her economic vision. Describing herself as an “insurgent” who wants to change things, she told the newspaper she wanted the UK to become a “high growth, high productivity, powerhouse”.

Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and a backer of Sunak, did not rule out someone from the private sector taking charge of a mooted vaccines-style taskforce to get on top of NHS backlogs.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: “I don’t think Rishi has set out who that would be. One thing we learned is that you can bring people in, either from across government where we’ve got excellent officials, or people with experience, and particularly the hybrid experience.”

Offering the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, as an example of someone with private and public sector experience, Raab said: “I think actually, capability matters more than whether you’re public or private sector in this particular context, in order to drive up outcomes for patients.”

Raab defended Sunak for not proposing any of these ideas while a senior member of the government, saying as chancellor he had focused on “the critical things” such as the vaccine rollout, and that it was now time to deal with the “aftershocks” of Covid-19.

“What Rishi has done is set out a very credible plan. And critically, it’s properly funded and the challenge is how anyone could match this plan to get overall numbers on waiting lists down by next year unless they also match the health and social care levy,” he said.

“And that just goes to this critical point in this contest – who’s got the credible plan, the credible plan on the economy, to get inflation down, the credible plan on the NHS to get waiting lists down? And it’s Rishi Sunak.”

PA Media contributed to this report.