Badenoch says growth being held up because ‘the state is too big’ and claims she is getting better at being Tory leader – UK politics live

Kemi Badenoch tells CBI conference that fewer people are working to support more people out of work

Badenoch says the problem with growth in this country is not that workers don’t have enough right. It’s that “the state is too big”, she says.

Fewer and fewer people are working to support more and more people out of work and living on welfare. The rider is getting heavier than the horse.

Q: Would more tax-free shopping for tourists help the high street?

Badenoch says, after Brexit, she thought tax-free shopping for foreign tourists would help British business. But she says she lost the argument internally, because other people in government were against the idea. She claims this was because they did not model the behavioural impact. (She is referring to the theory that, although the Treasury might lose from individual tourists getting a tax exemption, the overall boost to shopping would more than compensate for that.)