Norwich North MP Chloe Smith has hit back at criticism the government is not doing enough to tackle the cost of living crisis - as she announced an extra payment for disabled people.
The Conservative MP, who is backing fellow Norfolk MP Elizabeth Truss to become her party's next leader - and the country's next prime minister - took part in a series of broadcast media appearances on Tuesday.
Ms Smith, government minister for disabled people, health and work, appeared on the BBC, Sky News and radio station LBC to discuss how around six million disabled people will receive a £150 cost of living payment from the end of September.
But she faced questions about what South West Norfolk MP Ms Truss intends to do to tackle the cost of living crisis, with inflation predicted to hit 18pc early next year and energy bills rising.
Ms Smith said it was too early to say what further measures to aid people would be introduced.
But she said Ms Truss, who is the frontrunner to succeed Boris Johnson, “would want to be able to use all the data that is available” if she became prime minister.
She also said that rather than focus on freezes to the energy price cap, as Labour has demanded, a Truss administration would “look at the longer-term solutions about how to bring energy prices down”.
In her appearance on LBC on Tuesday morning, Ms Smith said the government was still working to support the most vulnerable but she was not yet able to share details of those efforts.
She said: "The next prime minister will want to look at all of this extremely closely and the work that is presently going on in government to look ahead to the challenges that come next is what will then be on the desk of that incoming prime minister, and I think that’s perfectly understandable.
“I can’t pre-empt that for you right now. I can’t write the emergency budget.”
Ms Smith said the one-off payment for disabled people, which was announced in May, will be paid automatically to people who receive certain disability benefits from September 20.
She said it was on top of £1,200 most low-income benefit claimants will now get.
Ms Truss and her leadership rival, former chancellor RIshi Sunak, will take part in a hustings in Norwich on Thursday.
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