Truss, the foreign secretary, told the Financial Times on Friday that while she did not rule out offering more financial support, she favored tax cuts over “handouts” as the best way to help struggling households. On Sunday the Truss said it would scrap the 1.25 percentage point rise in NI rates introduced by Sunak, the former chancellor, as soon as the cut feeds into pay packets this autumn – rather than waiting for the start of the next tax year in April of 2023. “I will look at what more can be done, but the way I would go about things is conservatively,” he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. “We could put more money back into the pockets of hard-working people without delay.” Sunak raised NI rates in April, branding the move a “health and social care levy”, but then in July reduced its impact on lower-income households by raising the threshold at which most people pay NI on their earnings from 9,880 £ to £12,570 a year. The former chancellor’s team says the £13 billion cut in NI rates will not help the poorest and most of the benefits will accrue to people on higher incomes. “Her tax cut will not touch the sides of the most families that will need the most help,” said a Sunak ally. Rishi Sunak campaigns in Edinburgh © PA Sunak’s team said a person working full-time on the National Minimum Wage would save £59 a year, while a person on average earnings of £26,000 would save £170. A person earning £100,000 would save over £1,000. Truss insisted on Sunday that her priority was to cut taxes and introduce supply-side reforms to grow the economy. Sunak says he is ready to offer more targeted help on top of the £1,200 already earmarked for vulnerable households, and Truss’ critics say she should offer a huge help package to households too poor to pay income tax or national insurance. “I would hit the ground running by bringing in an emergency budget, setting a firm course to grow our economy to help fund our public services and the NHS,” Truss wrote. “I would immediately use it to tackle the cost of living crisis by cutting taxes, reversing the rise in National Insurance and suspending the green levy on green bills.” Meanwhile, Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, said Boris Johnson, the prime minister, should sit down with Truss and Sunak and agree an emergency budget now, ahead of the outcome of the Tory leadership contest on September 5 . Brown wrote in Sunday’s Observer that the delay risked “condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty”.