The Times- True equality is about bread and butter issues, not just taking the knee says Liz Truss
INTERVIEW
True equality is about bread and butter issues, not just taking the knee says Liz Truss
Liz Truss tells Steven Swinford that she won’t countenance the silencing of debate on race or gender
Liz Truss MP, secretary of state for international trade and minister for women and equalities, believes it is dangerous to “cancel” people for controversial opinions
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
Steven Swinford
, Political Editor
The Times
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Liz Truss is the government’s great survivor. Having worked for three different Conservative prime ministers across four different departments, she is now firmly ensconced as trade secretary in an office in the Old Admiralty building that was once occupied by Ian Fleming.
The longest-serving cabinet minister finds herself in the unfamiliar position of being tipped for promotion and as a potential rival for the future of the Tory leadership to Rishi Sunak. The days when she was subject to consistent speculation that she would face the sack, it would appear, are behind her. “Thanks for reminding me of that,” she says with a laugh. “I am extremely happy being the trade secretary. I have got a huge opportunity to reshape trade policy to be much more outward facing, optimistic and positive about Britain’s future. Who would not want that job?”
Truss’s brief is one of the broadest in government. As well as taking responsibility for securing post-Brexit trade deals, she is also minister for women and equalities and is concerned about the debate surrounding transgender identity.
This month Maya Forstater, a tax expert who lost her job after saying that trans women are male or “honorary female”, won an appeal against an employment tribunal which found that the decision to dismiss her was lawful. “I’m pleased Maya Forstater got the result she did in court because it’s important that we are able to debate these issues,” Truss says.
How does she feel about claims by Nancy Kelley, the head of Stonewall, that free speech is not “without limits” and compared “gender critical beliefs” to anti-semitism? “I think it’s always very dangerous to try to brush genuine concerns people have under the carpet and say we can’t talk about them,” Truss says. “It’s much more healthy to have an open debate about ideas, to have an honest discussion, rather than trying to say that people should be cancelled if they try to raise those issues.
“It is important that people are able to express their views freely. It’s important that we protect single-sex spaces for vulnerable women such as domestic abuse shelters, and I will say I’m very concerned to make sure the under 18s aren’t able to undertake irreversible treatment they could later regret.”
Truss is also concerned about the rise of “identity politics focused on symbols and gestures”. She says that while England footballers are entitled to take the knee and should not be booed, she wouldn’t do it herself.
“I wouldn’t take the knee and I wouldn’t boo people who took the knee,” she says. “I don’t feel it’s the right thing to do. What I’m focused on as equality minister is real action on the bread and butter issues that affect people’s lives. Am I being paid fairly, do I have the same opportunity to get a job as everyone else, am I treated right in terms of my access to public services.
“I’ve talked about this trend of identify politics focused on symbols and gestures. I don’t think it’s the right approach. I feel the right approach is actually dealing with real issues of inequality,” she says.
“The vast gap in educational attainment between children in different parts of the country. The issues we have in Stem, the low number of women in Stem careers which have higher earnings. Making sure it’s easier for gay men to give blood donations.
“Those are real issues that affect real people’s lives — education, employment. Is it easy to get access to finance if you’re from an ethnic minority? Those are the issues that people around the country care about. I just feel that society has got distracted by things that aren’t as important as that.”
As part of her equalities brief, Truss is an enthusiastic proponent of working from home — a trend she believes should become “much more normalised” after the pandemic. She credits it with affording people, particularly women, with new opportunities and boosting levelling up.
“I do want to see working from home becoming much more normalised,” she says. “It is beneficial for parents. It is also beneficial for people who don’t live in the big cities.
“So I think it can help levelling up by allowing people to do jobs where previously you might have had to work in central London, there are opportunities to do those jobs from wherever you live in the country.
“The work we’ve done in the equalities office suggests that when jobs are advertised as flexible, you do get more applications, particularly from women. It does help levelling up. It helps levelling up geographically. It also helps level the gap between men and women.”
On Monday, Truss reached trade deal with Australia — “our first from scratch” — while on Thursday she reached an agreement with the US to suspend tariffs on Scotch. On the day of our interview she has just emerged from three hours of talks with a delegation from New Zealand which she hopes will result in a deal by the end of the summer.
The deal with Australia, however, has proved contentious. It led to a Cabinet split which saw Truss clash with George Eustice, the environment secretary, amid concerns that imports of lamb and beef from Australia risked decimating British farming.
The zero-tariff deal has a 15-year transition period, but campaigners and many Tory MPs have warned it is not enough and believe that the deal will set a damaging precedent.
Truss, needless to say, disagrees and argues that British farmers will benefit from new opportunities to sell to southeast Asia.
“We’ve got to look at the opportunities, we’ve got to do more from defence on trade to offence,” she says. “Rather than being defensive, we need to be positive about the opportunities. We are not going to succeed by being a protectionist island with high tariff barriers, a sort of mini EU on the EU’s doorstep. We’re going to succeed by learning from our own history. When we are open to the rest of the world, when we allow the flow of goods, of ideas, when we have good arrangements that allow Brits to go live and work abroad that is when we are at our most successful. I think many of the people who voted for Brexit want to see that type of approach.”
Truss, who backed Remain, is now one of the biggest proponents of Brexit in government. “The fundamental problem with the way that the EU approaches trade is it tries to insist that everybody else in the world follows the EU rules,” she says. “It’s kind of my way or the highway approach, but also it’s inherently defensive that’s why the EU is currently going into its fourth year of talks with Australia.
“That doesn’t enable you to realise the benefits of trade, we know that they’re huge. We know that trade has lifted billions of people out of poverty and we know that Britain has been at its best when it’s been a trading nation, whether that was in the 19th century when we abolished the corn laws, or in the 20th century when we conducted major liberalisations, or now when we are reaching out to the rest of the world.”
Is her colleague Eustice now on board? “George has made a statement today about how we’re going to be providing more support for our farmers to export and I’m going to be working very closely with George,” she says.
Part of the reasoning behind the concerns of Eustice and others is the precedent the Australia deal sets — particularly for any agreement with the US. Critics have repeatedly warned that animal welfare standards are lower in the US, an issue that has been crystallised in the debate around chlorinated chicken.
“We’re not going to lower our import standards,” Truss says. “But what we’re not going to be in is the business of EU-style regulatory imperialism, basically telling other countries how to run their farms. If we’re insisting on sovereignty we can hardly tell people they can’t have it.”
She says that ultimately animal welfare standards will improve in the US. “Around the world there is a much greater awareness of animal welfare than there was ten years ago,” Truss says. “I know consumers in the US think similarly to the UK. They want to buy meat produced to high standards, this is why we’ve got such a good opportunity.”
Truss will not be drawn on the timing of a US trade deal, but says “we’ve got a lot on our plate at the moment” as she highlights ongoing negotiations with New Zealand, India, Mexico and Canada. The clear inference is that other deals are likely to come first.
She continues to be concerned about China, which she accuses of breaking international rules on trade. “There is a genuine problem with the practises of non-market economies undermining free enterprise economies,” she says. “China are not adhering to the current rules of the World Trade Organisation. What we need to see is China change the way it’s behaving in the trading system.”
She is deeply concerned by China’s human rights abuses and the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, which highlight her determination to ensure that British businesses do not source material from slave Labour. Does she agree with many Tory MPs that it amounts to genocide? “It’s not a matter for me to determine, it’s a matter for the courts,” she says. “I’m not my own judge and jury.”
Truss is no fan of Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s former adviser. Cummings has published text messages from Johnson showing that he had described Matt Hancock, the health secretary, as “totally f***ing hopeless”.
As one of four Cabinet ministers who did not tweet in support of Cummings after he travelled to County Durham during the first lockdown, Truss is clear where her allegiances lie. What does she think of Cummings? “I’m great friends with Matt Hancock,” she says. “He is doing a brilliant job, he is a very good guy.”
Cummings claimed that Johnson plans to stand down if he wins the next election so he can “make money and have fun”. Truss, by contrast, sees Johnson as a three-term prime minister. “The prime minister is doing a fantastic job. He’s going to continue doing a fantastic job. I predict he will fight this election and the next election.”
While she’s reluctant to say what she really thinks of the prime minister’s former adviser, she can’t resist when asked a quickfire question about Cummings or Keir Starmer. “Neither, I can’t choose between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
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