Jeremy Hunt: We need to make difficult decisionson October 15, 2022 at 12:18 pm

Difficult decisions will be needed “across the board” on tax and spending, the new chancellor has said.

Jeremy Hunt told the BBC that some taxes will go up, while government spending may need to fall.

He said two mistakes were made in the mini-budget by Kwasi Kwarteng – cutting the top rate of tax and announcing it without an independent forecast.

But he also praised his predecessor for help offered to people struggling with their energy bills.

Mr Hunt said he agreed with the prime minister’s goal of “solving the growth paradox”, but added: “The way we went about it clearly wasn’t right and that’s why I’m sitting here now.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Mr Hunt said: “Taxes are not going to come down by as much as people hoped, and some taxes will have to go up.

“I’m going to be asking all government departments to find additional efficiency savings.”

But Mr Hunt, who was appointed as chancellor on Friday after Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked by the prime minister, refused to outline any details for his tax and spending plans.

He told BBC Breakfast he was “not going to make any commitments” and reiterated he was just hours into the job.

However, the chancellor made a series of points about the government’s mini-budget and discussed possible plans for his new role:

Mr Hunt’s comments come after the government’s mini-budget last month, which included £45bn worth of tax cuts, and sparked turbulence in the financial markets.

Addressing mistakes he said were made by the ex-chancellor, Mr Hunt said: “There were two mistakes – it was wrong to cut the top rate of tax for the very highest earners at a time where we’re going to have to be asking for sacrifices from everyone to get through a very difficult period.

“And it was wrong to fly blind and to announce those plans without reassuring people with the discipline of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that we actually can afford to pay for them.”

He said both of these were now in the process of “being put right”.

Mr Hunt said he would be meeting Treasury officials later and Liz Truss on Sunday.

After just 39 days as prime minister, Ms Truss is facing huge pressure from within her party as key elements of the major economic plan she and the former chancellor set out in September have been scrapped.

The prime minister is facing a backlash from Conservative MPs after announcing the government’s second U-turn in a month.

Friday’s U-turn on plans to cut corporation tax followed an earlier reversal of plans to cut the 45p rate of income tax for the highest earners.

One Tory MP described the party as being in a “state of despair”, but Truss supporter Christopher Chope said “time will tell” if she had done enough to secure her position.

Asked whether there should be a general election, Mr Hunt told the BBC: “What the country wants now is stability.

“[Truss] has been prime minister for less than five weeks. When we are judged at a general election, we will be judged by what we deliver over the next 18 months by far more than what’s happened over the last 18 weeks.”

The PM has described sacking Mr Kwarteng and scrapping another key economic policy as “difficult” and admitted in a short press conference on Friday that “parts of our mini-budget went further and faster” than the markets were expecting.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the prime minister of “grotesque chaos” in her sacking of the former chancellor.

During a speech in Barnsley a day after the upheaval in Westminster, Sir Keir said Ms Truss was “clinging on”, arguing that there was “no historical precedent” for the current situation facing her government.

He said: “Britain has faced financial crises before but the prime ministers and chancellors who wrestled with them all acted fast. When their policies ran against the rocks of reality, they took decisive action.

“But this lot, they didn’t just tank the British economy, they also clung on as they made they pound sink.”