Liz Truss considered cutting cancer care on the NHS in a desperate bid to find savings to pay for the tax cuts in her botched “mini budget”, according to a new book about her time in office.

The book, Truss at 10: How Not to Be Prime Minister by the renowned political biographer Anthony Seldon, is a 330-page long, largely excoriating account of Truss’s 45 days in Downing Street.

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The book reports that, as Truss’s mini budget unravelled around her, her policy director Jamie Hope and economic adviser Shabbir Merali huddled in Downing Street and discussed how the cuts she was contemplating could not be delivered. The book says:

“At that point, they were joined by fellow special adviser Alex Boyd, who was told that Truss and Kwarteng were thinking they could still sort out the black hole with severe cuts.

“We’ve been told that they’re looking at stopping cancer treatment on the NHS,” they told him.

“Is she being serious?” Boyd asked. “She’s lost the plot,” they replied. “She’s shouting at everyone – at us and officials that we’ve ‘got to find the money!’ When we tell her it can’t be done, she shouts back, ‘It’s not true. The money is there. You go and find it.’”