Ex-Liz Truss aide claims her team used to make up excuses including ‘killing off minor members’ of the awkward PM’s family so she could avoid media appearances including Question Time when she was a Cabinet minister

• Kirsty Buchanan was a media adviser to Ms Truss when she was justice secretary
• Told a podcast said they eventually ‘ran out of excuses’ to avoid Question Time 
• Said they only killed off ‘minor people like aunts and cousins and things’

Liz Truss hates appearing on television so much her team used to pretend her relatives had died to get her out of interviews, a former aide claimed today. 

Kirsty Buchanan, who was a media adviser to Ms Truss when she was justice secretary, said they eventually ‘ran out of excuses’ to avoid appearing on Question Time. 

Speaking to the Whitehall Sources podcast she also admitted that Ms Truss told aides not to allow her on the topical debate show with a specific other person – only to spot him in the green room.

Ms Buchanan, who worked with Ms Truss in 2016 and 2017, made the revelation as the now PM finds herself clinging to power, not helped by a series of poor media performances.

The ex-journalist and special adviser said: ‘Liz Truss, when I worked for her, she didn’t like the media, so we used to spend quite a lot of time making up excuses and killing off minor members of her family so she didn’t have to go on Question Time.’

Under questioning she said it was ‘only minor people like aunts and cousins and things – I’m not talking about major members of the family.’

Kirsty Buchanan, who was a media adviser to Ms Truss when she was justice secretary, said they eventually ‘ran out of excuses’ to avoid appearing on Question Time.

Ms Buchanan, who worked with Ms Truss in 2016 and 2017, made the revelation as the now PM finds herself clinging to power, not helped by a series of poor media performances.

‘We ran out of excuses not to go on Question Time so we eventually had to do it … we ended up on Question Time  and she said to me ”I don’t care who is on the panel as long as it’s not X” – and I’m not going to tell you who X is – and we’d turn up in the green room and there is the one person she didn’t want to go on a panel with.

‘And she looked at me and if looks could kill – I was like ”sorry!” I don’t know if they did it on purpose because he is a long-time baiter of hers.’

Ms Truss appeared on Question Time nine times between 2012 and 2019. In the time she was justice secretary she appeared on panels alongside male guests the Reverend Giles Fraser, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellow, ex-Labour MP Frank Field, Ex-Tory MP turned Ukip local leader Neil Hamilton, leftwing commentator Owen Jones, former Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell and commentator Peter Hitchens.

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