Henry Zeffman
Reporting from Manchester

The first big cheer at Liz Truss’s event came when Liam Halligan, the journalist chairing, pointed out that she had been “elected” to lead the Conservative Party - “unlike the current prime minister”.

That gets to one of the reasons this event has such an edge. It’s not just that Truss is critiquing her successor’s approach - though that is significant.

It is also that she was the Conservative activists’ choice over Rishi Sunak just over a year ago. And this conference is our best guide yet to how frustrated they are, or are not, by Truss’s removal.

More from Truss, who turns to the second of her three points - "cutting the bills".

The former PM says "people in Britain are paying the highest energy bills in Europe"; businesses are also paying high bills leading to some jobs being "exported overseas", she contends.

"We need to cut those bills," she continues. "It is possible to do that. We have seen what happened in the United States when they started using shale gas.

"We can learn those lessons here in the UK."

Truss says it is important the UK "unleashes" the gas it is sitting on to help fuel the economy.

The former PM is referring to shale gas fracking - she lifted a ban on the controversial process when she took office last year.

That ban was later restored by Rishi Sunak in his first PMQs in October 2022.

The former PM starts her speech talking about her belief that tax cuts are essential - including corporation tax.

Truss says corporation tax needs to be reduced to 19% to attract, and keep businesses operating in the UK.

"Frankly if we can get it lower, the better,” she says.

She lists AstraZeneca as an example of a business that has relocated out of the UK, and says that "we need to be hungry to get those businesses back".

Truss says she wants to make the Tories "the party of business again" and adds that growth won't be delivered by the Treasury or public spending, but by giving freedom to businesses.

• Chancellor Jeremy Hunt raised corporation tax from 19% to 25% earlier this year - you can read more here

A beaming Truss starts her speech to the room with thanks for her introduction and continues by saying the Tories need to "make lives easier for those across our land".

She mentions the slogan on the posters behind her - "Making Britain Grow Again".

Truss says she wants to talk about three things: "Axing the tax, cutting the bills and building the homes."

The former prime minister has just started her speech on the fringes of the Conservative Party conference.

We'll bring you the updates on what she says here - and you can watch live at the top of this page by pressing the play button.

Chris Mason
Political editor

It is packed in here. A queue snaking through the Midland Hotel.

People crammed into the room. The former prime minister Liz Truss in the front row. Nigel Farage, the former Brexit Party leader too. And banners behind the stage.

Make Britain Grow Again, a twist on the slogan made famous by Donald Trump.

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

Liz Truss was in charge of the Tory party this time last year. The conference was where the wheels started to come off her control of her party.

But standing in the Midland Hotel - where she’s speaking soon - the queues of hundreds indicate she’s still pretty popular with members.

She’s going to pile more pressure on Rishi Sunak and make the case for tax cuts. It’s a message a lot of people do seem to want to hear.

Brian Wheeler

While we await Liz Truss, here's more from the conference fringes.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has said the government got it wrong after Brexit by introducing a “more liberal” legal migration system.

He told a fringe meeting at the Tory conference that Brexit had given ministers the “levers” to control legal migration.

But, Jenrick added: “Where I think we have gone wrong, immediately after leaving the EU we established a legal migration system that was, if anything, even more liberal than the system we had when we were in the EU.”

Jenrick said the government was determined to “finish the revolution we started with Brexit” by restricting entry to more people.

UK net migration - the difference between those entering and leaving - reached 606,000 in 2022, an all-time high.

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

Half an hour before the scheduled speech by Liz Truss, a long queue was winding past the bar of the conference hotel, up a flight of stairs and then down some more stairs.

To put it another way: there are definitely more Tory activists who want to hear their former leader speak than there are seats available.

At the moment it’s mostly journalists who have made it into the room, where the stage is festooned with signs declaring “Make Britain Grow Again”.

Journalists… and Nigel Farage, who was for so many years the scourge of the Conservative Party.

Chris Mason
Political editor

It's not just Jeremy Hunt and Liz Truss speaking at the conference today, as our political editor notes. As well as wages and taxes, another topic is on the Tory agenda... phones in schools.

The Education Secretary Gillian Keegan will tell the Conservative conference in Manchester that she is to issue new guidance to schools in England banning the use of mobile phones during school time.

The guidance will be non statutory - to use the jargon - so won’t be a legal obligation for schools to follow.

But government sources say they are confident it will make a difference in reducing the use of phones during the school day.

Gillian Keegan - who will address her party’s conference this afternoon - will say mobile phones are a distraction and are often used for bullying.

The guidance, due to be issued "shortly", is designed to allow pupils to bring phones to school - so they can be used on the journeys there and back - but not be used during the school day.

This idea has been touted before - including by the Schools Minister Nick Gibb in 2019.

Just last year the Department for Education concluded no new guidance was necessary as the policies schools already had in place were sufficient.

Image source, PA

Thousands of people took to the streets of Manchester to protest yesterday, on the opening day of the Conservative Party conference.

The protesters chanted "Tories out" as they moved through the city.

Image source, Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Image source, Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Image source, Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Maria Zaccaro
Live reporter

We're in the midst of a busy political news cycle. Not least because a general election has to be held by January 2025 at the latest - but it's also the season of party conferences.

The Liberal Democrats had their annual meeting at the end of September in Bournemouth while Labour will begin theirs on 8 October in Liverpool.

As we've been reporting, the Conservative conference is under way in Manchester - and we're expecting the chancellor and the former PM Liz Truss to speak this afternoon.

The original purpose of conferences was to decide party policy.

But these days they've turned into gatherings for party members, think tanks, trade unions, charities and businesses to come together and share ideas, lobby politicians and debate policies.

Not everything that's said at these conferences will translate into government policy.

But these debates come ahead of other big events on the political agenda.

These include the Autumn Statement in November - when the chancellor sets out his economic plans.

Image source, PA Media

As Henry just mentioned, Liz Truss addressed the Conservative Party conference this time twelve months ago as the party’s leader and the UK's prime minister. She'll speak again today.

Last year, Truss vowed to “get Britain moving”, and laid out her three priorities for the economy - “growth, growth and growth”. She spoke of an effort to grow the “economic pie so that everyone could enjoy a bigger slice”.

Her speech was briefly interrupted by Greenpeace protesters, whom she later referred to as being part of the “anti-growth coalition”.

She added that not everybody will be in favour of her changes, but “everyone would benefit from the results”.

Truss' ill-fated government collapsed just weeks after last year's conference - following her failed "mini-budget", which sparked a revolt within her own party and made her the shortest-serving British PM ever.

Truss returns to play a different role - but her views are unchangedpublished at 10:27 British Summer Time 2 October 2023

10:27 BST 2 October 2023

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

Exactly a year ago, Liz Truss arrived at her first party conference as Conservative leader with a vow to “stand by” her economic policies.

It proved to be her last conference as prime minister, too. Today she is playing the rather different role of ghost at the feast.

But her commitment to tax cuts and to rolling back regulations has not changed. The speech she is set to deliver this afternoon from the fringes of the Conservative conference will make arguments she made as prime minister - that businesses are over taxed, that there are too many planning regulations, and that fracking should be used to meet the UK’s energy needs.

Truss is making these arguments in the knowledge that her successor Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt disagree with her. The government’s view is that inflation is the most severe tax on Britons at the moment - and that only once that has come down can they begin to consider tax cuts.

Speech highlights Tory splits

That is a genuine philosophical divide in the Conservative Party. Among MPs, the bulk of the opinion is in favour of Sunak, especially given how Truss’s government turned out. But it's always important to remember that there are plenty of MPs still in Truss’s camp - some of whom will appear with her today.

One risk for Sunak is that Truss’s speech draws attention to that party divide. Another risk, especially at a conference of activists, is that it reminds party members of why they chose Truss over Sunak last summer - a decision that was later reversed by MPs without recourse to the membership.

And above all, don’t lose sight of how unusual it is to see a former prime minister turning up to rebuke her successor during his big week.

Politics has been strange for a while. But this is really strange.

Image source, PA Media

Here's one more line to bring you from the chancellor - before we look a bit more closely at what we expect from former PM Liz Truss today

Jeremy Hunt has appeared to distance himself from a speech by the Home Secretary Suella Braverman last week, in which she said that being discriminated against for being gay or a woman shouldn't automatically entitle a person to refugee status in the UK.

Braverman also suggested that the international asylum system was no longer fit for purpose, in a speech that triggered a backlash from fellow Tory MPs and the United Nations.

Hunt, whose wife is Chinese, says he "wouldn't use her words", and that he thought there were significant benefits to allowing skilled workers into the UK.

"I am married to an immigrant and I've always believed that we benefit massively as a country from welcoming the brightest and best from all over the world", he told TalkTV.

"But she's absolutely right that the social contract that makes Britain one of the most tolerant countries in the world when it comes to immigrants depends on fairness", he added.

We haven't heard the reaction of Labour or the Lib Dems to the chancellor's media round this morning, but here's what the two parties have recently said about their tax policies.

In late August, the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves ruled out any version of a wealth tax on the richest in society. At the time, Reeves confirmed Labour would not target expensive houses, increase capital gains tax or put up the top rate of income tax.

Last week the Liberal Democrats dropped their plans to put a penny on income tax to invest into the NHS and social care. Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Lib Dems, told the BBC "the last thing" people needed was "yet more tax rises" during a cost-of-living crisis.

As we've been reflecting this morning, tax cuts have been at the centre of a political debate among Tory MPs lately.

Former Primer Minister Liz Truss is among those who have called for cuts. We're expecting to hear more from her at the Conservative Party conference later today.

But Chancellor Jeremy Hunt - who will set out his economic plans in his Autumn Statement in November – has said tax cuts are "virtually impossible" at present. He maintained that position this morning.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that as a Conservative, he wants to cut taxes, but he has given no detail on when he will do so and whether that'll be before next year’s general elections.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago and are unlikely to come down soon.

• Listen here to analysis of the PM's interview with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday with Laura herself, plus Henry Zeffman and Paddy O'Connell

Image source, Alstom

We know the Conservative Party is pondering the fate of the HS2, amid rumours that the leg connecting Manchester to Birmingham and London will be scrapped. But where do the other parties stand?

Labour have criticised the rumoured plans to cut the HS2, and a group of Labour mayors warned that not delivering the rail line in full "leave swathes of the North with Victorian transport infrastructure".

They have however refused to commit to the project in full until the full costs involved become known.

The Liberal Democrats have supported HS2 in the past, but have not recently commented on the rail line.

The Green Party has opposed the rail line since it was first planned in the early 2010s, saying that it would create additional environmental challenges to grapple with. In 2021, the party's then-leader Caroline Lucas said, external the HS2’s legacy would be one of “environmental annihilation, eye-watering expense and broken promises”.

Hunt's non-committal answers around HS2 come as the government has refused to carry guarantee that the high-speed railway will be extended to Manchester as originally promised.

The planned rail line - meant to connect the north of England to London - is seen as key to the government's pledge to "level up" the country.

The first leg between London and Birmingham is already under construction, but rising costs have led to growing doubts about the future of the second leg, from Birmingham to Manchester.

Asked about the issue yesterday on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government was "getting on with delivering [the project]. I'm not going to comment on this speculation."

Transport Minister Richard Holden said on Sunday the government was right to keep the HS2 leg to Manchester under review as it had a "big impact" on cost. "It is right we properly look at it and the chancellor and prime minister really dig into the detail of it," he said.

The Leeds leg of the line was scrapped by the government in 2021, external.

Image source, .

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme a short while ago, the chancellor became the latest government minister to deflect questions about the troubled HS2 project.