Ms Truss plans to work closely with her chancellor and work as one team, according to sources, but with a strong economic presence within Number 10. During a visit to Norfolk on Friday, she said she was committed to “challenging the current orthodoxy around investment spending”, adding: “We need more of it going into rural areas, more of it going into left-behind areas, more of it going into parts of Britain that don’t have a good infrastructure yet, and that’s what I’m committed to do.” On Friday night, the Foreign Secretary pledged to “unlock” home ownership for thousands more young people by helping renters prove they are ready to take on a mortgage. She said she would encourage the Bank of England to allow rent payments to be used as part of the affordability assessment for a mortgage. According to the Government, more than half of today’s renters could afford the monthly cost of a mortgage, but various constraints mean only six per cent could immediately access a typical first-time buyer mortgage. The Truss campaign said this is because the majority of lenders do not currently take someone’ s ability to pay a certain amount of rent as proof that they can afford to pay a higher mortgage, pricing them out of buying a home. Ms said she intended to “rip up the red tape that is holding back house-building” by “scrapping top-down, Whitehall-imposed housing targets”, adding: “People are getting older and older before they get their foot on the property ladder. “As prime minister, I would break down barriers and unlock the opportunity of homeownership for millions of hard-working renters across the nation. I will also rip up red tape that’s holding back house-building.” Writing in the Countryside Alliance magazine, Ms Truss said she would remove red tape in the inspection regime for food producers in an attempt to improve Britain’s food security. She vowed to “unleash the potential of our rural communities” and “place planning powers back in the hands of local people who know their communities best, allowing them to grow organically and meet local needs”.
