Leaked comments by shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith suggest the Tories' £47bn cuts plans would go beyond the sum already announced if the party wins the next election, surfacing on the eve of the party's conference in Birmingham.

What Griffith told party members

Griffith made the remarks last year, while serving as shadow business secretary, telling Conservative members that he and fellow shadow cabinet ministers had discussed making further cuts. There were, he said, decisions made and signed up to by everybody to deliver the £47bn. According to the report, the comments point to reductions on a scale similar to the austerity years should the party take power.

Griffith told members at the time:

The rate at which the economy was deteriorating, plus the ambition to cut more taxes, meant further savings would have to be found, he argued, adding that he was ready to make them in his own department. He told members that savings could be made across the whole of government.

He framed the task as a moral mission:

• •getting the economy growing
• •giving people opportunity
• •letting people keep more of what they earn

That, he summed up, is what the Conservatives stand for.

In August, Badenoch promoted Griffith from shadow business secretary; he previously worked as chief operating officer for Sky. In government, Griffith served in the Treasury under Kwasi Kwarteng and was one of the ministers tasked with defending the mini-budget as the markets tanked in response.

The £47bn already pledged

Kemi Badenoch has previously outlined how a Conservative government would cut spending by £47bn, mainly by cutting welfare spending for all non-British or EU citizens. The announced package includes:

• •£8bn of savings from cutting 132,000 civil service jobs
• •£1.6bn from scrapping almost all of Labour's clean energy scheme
• •more than £7bn from cutting international aid

Party response and new promises

A Tory spokesperson acknowledged the party was seeking to make cuts beyond what it had already announced, pointing to its advocacy under Badenoch's leadership for a smaller state and a government that does fewer things but better. In Birmingham, the party said, it will go further, setting out savings to Labour's welfare bill and a crackdown on wasteful spending.

On Friday, Badenoch promised another £4bn of spending reductions:

• •another £2.5bn taken out of the aid budget, which would leave it with £1bn a year
• •a £1bn reduction to the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• •half of those savings to pay for an additional 50,000 prison places
• •half of any cuts, as she has previously promised, used to reduce the deficit

Badenoch's smaller-state pitch against Labour

The leaked remarks landed as the Tories prepared to gather in Birmingham, with Badenoch seeking to make a virtue of the growing distance between Labour's plans for government and her own. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has promised a series of potentially expensive interventions, among them a new national care service and public control over utility companies, as he seeks to end what he calls "40 years of neoliberalism".

Badenoch, who has called Margaret Thatcher her hero, is attempting to gain an electoral advantage with her vision of lower taxes and a significantly smaller state. On Friday she told ITV Meridian that privatisation was a success and that she did not think Andy Burnham running the water companies was the answer to those problems.

Of Thatcher, she told the broadcaster:

The Tories remain third in the polls behind Labour and Reform UK, although Badenoch's personal ratings have rallied over the last 12 months.