Hello and welcome to The Spectators Conservative Party Leadership Hostings. I'm Isabel Harbman and I'm going to be joined by the final three contenders in this race to number 10, Penny Mordant, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Now the contest has got rather heated in the last few days and so for health and safety reasons,

we decided to keep the candidates apart and actually grill them on the substance of what they were standing for.

So you'll hear first from Penny Mordant, then from Rishi Sunak, who's joining us down the line,

and then finally from Liz Truss. Do enjoy.

Well, thank you, Penny Morden, for joining us for our

spectator hustings. Please give us your one-minute opening bid to be Conservative leader.

Well, I think it's incredibly important that we win the next general election. And it's important

to win elections, but the next one is really critical, because unless we do, we will not lock in all the benefits that we have now, having left the regulatory orbit of the EU.

We won't consolidate that position.

Labor or a Labour-led socialist coalition will drag us back in to that regulatory orbit

and they will not be able to have the vision that we have to respond to the mandate that

the people gave us for a new direction for the United Kingdom.

Okay, thank you. Well, let's move on to our first topic, which is the

key dividing line in this contest, tax cuts. Do you propose significant tax cuts? How significant

and how would you pay for them? So in this contest, I think that this is not the place to be

setting out a new tax policy on things like corporation tax. What I've

chosen to do is focus on growth and competition. Clearly, next April on the current trajectory,

Rishi's set us on, we are going to be one of the most uncompetitive nations in the OECD.

And that cannot be allowed to happen.

We have to be able to compete.

So there will need to be some changes.

But exactly what and when is not the issue for this contest.

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