Truss had claimed that the introduction of regional pay boards, which he said would “adjust pay to the cost of living where public servants actually work”, could save up to £8.8bn a year. But Truss was forced into a policy reversal, which was met with an angry outcry from Conservative MPs across the country. The announcement on Monday night was fiercely opposed by senior Tories, who said it would “flatten” the nation by leaving nurses, police and teachers worse off. Truss insisted her policy had been “falsified”. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show on Wednesday who believed Trudeau had misrepresented her policy, Lewis, the Conservative party chairman, said: “We’ve seen quite a few people stretching figures and talking about pay cuts for various people , which was never an outline of politics and what Liz was looking at. “Obviously what we see during these campaigns is people setting policies. Obviously we have seen Rishi [Sunak] ideas float around and then change about eight or nine times in the last couple of weeks. “But what Liz described yesterday is the bigger package, the issue of dealing with waste in Whitehall … cutting the public service, the 91,000 increase we’ve seen in the last period and making sure that the money spent, the money of taxpayers are spent on frontline services. “But it was never about cutting the pay of public sector workers who have been so brilliant through Covid and work over the last few years.” But when asked why the press release sent out by the Truss leadership team said the measure could save up to £8.8bn a year, a figure that is only correct if public sector pay cuts are included, Lewis said: “The wording where it’s important is the word ‘if’, that was never something that was proposed…Liz made it very clear yesterday that this is not a policy being promoted.” Lewis’ comments came after Truss was forced to make a U-turn in policy, which was met with an angry outcry from Conservative MPs across the country. Ben Houchen, the Tory mayor of Tees Valley, said he had been left “speechless” and there was no way the figure could be reached without pay cuts outside London leading to an upward trend. “Actually speechless,” Houchen tweeted. “There is simply no way to do this without a huge pay cut for 5.5 million people, including our nurses, police and armed forces outside London. So much we’ve worked for in places like Teesside would be undone.” A spokesman for Truss’s campaign said there had been “deliberate misrepresentation of our campaign”, although he was unable to say exactly what was misrepresented. “Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained,” the spokesman said. “Anything we suggest otherwise is simply wrong. “Our frontline workers are the bedrock of society and there will be no proposal for regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.” Sunak, her leadership rival, said the £8.8bn savings claims could only be achieved with cuts across the public sector and estimated a cut of around £1,500 for employees outside the south-east of England.