Newspaper headlines: Sunak pledges billions and winter poverty warning

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By BBC News
Staff
PA Media

According to the Sun on Sunday, the gloves have come off in the Conservative leadership race as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak attack each other over their economic plans.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss says she would use an emergency budget next month to reverse the recent National Insurance rise and suspend the green levy on energy bills. She adds she would look at what more could be done.

The foreign secretary gets the backing of the Telegraph - which, in its editorial, describes her as the "first truly philosophy-driven leader since Margaret Thatcher".

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times says Rishi Sunak has pledged another multi-billion pound package of direct support to people struggling to pay their bills. He told the paper Ms Truss was wrong to concentrate on tax cuts and rule out handouts to those on low incomes, including pensioners.

Interviewed in the Times, the former chancellor seems unperturbed by his under-dog status. He is not giving up, he says, and plans to "love-bomb" the Tory membership - one-by-one if necessary.

According a report in the paper from the hustings in Cardiff and Eastbourne, the contest is "still all to play for". It describes the voters as being "undecided, frustrated and split".

But the Mail on Sunday says Cabinet supporters of Mr Sunak have been in secret talks with the Ms Truss about defecting to her camp as her poll lead lengthens.

Both contenders push more policies they would implement if they become prime minister. The Sunday Express reports with approval Mr Sunak's plans to crack down on child grooming gangs.

The paper says all police forces will have to record the ethnicity of those involved. He is quoted as saying he will not let political correctness stop him from taking action.

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The Sunday Express also gives prominence to Ms Truss's pledge to do more to stop illegal crossings of the Channel in small boats.

On that issue, the Mail leads on what it says are figures from a leaked secret military intelligence report showing four in 10 migrants are from peaceful Albania where - as the paper puts it - there has not been a war for 25 years.

The Mail says nine criminal gangs are behind the crossings, used inflatable boats bought online from China. The paper describes the official document as the "clearest evidence yet" that the asylum system is being abused.

A photograph showing smoke billowing over Stonehenge appears in several papers. The Sun on Sunday says visitors watched in horror as a fire in a nearby field raged across Salisbury Plain.

The prolonged dry spell in the south of England prompts the Environment Secretary, George Eustice, to demand, in the Telegraph, that more water companies act to protect and preserve water supplies. The paper interprets that as a call for more hosepipe bans - possibly within days.

The Sunday People reports that as another heatwave looms, Britain is facing an "eco meltdown". It says activists have been meeting to plan a blockade of Parliament and other demonstrations as part of protests against new oil and gas projects.

Finally, in what it describes as a "watershed moment", the Sunday Times says that, for the first time, a museum funded by the government has decided to return its haul of the "Benin bronzes".

These were thousands of artefact looted by British troops from Nigeria at the end of the 19th Century. They are scattered around the world. Trustees of the Horniman Museum, in south-east London, have now agreed to transfer 72 items to Nigerian ownership.