Hunt tempers hopes for tax cuts and says Budget will be ‘prudent’
The Chancellor has tempered hopes that he will deliver major tax cuts in next week’s Budget after cautioning that it will be “prudent”.
Jeremy Hunt is understood to be considering cutting national insurance again, but i revealed that hopes for that have been dashed due to a worse-than-expected forecasts front the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Mr Hunt told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips show that his Budget this week will be “prudent and responsible”.
He insisted that everything he does “will be responsible” and “will be affordable” and he wanted to ensure it would make a difference in decades to come.
Mr Hunt added that the the two percentage point cut in national insurance in last year’s autumn statement was a “turning point” and insisted that he hoped to ” make some progress on that journey” in the future.
The Chancellor also appear to water down tax cut hopes in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in which he warned it would be a “long path” to bring the tax burden down.
Mr Hunt told the paper that the fiscal forecasts had “gone against us”, and reports in The Sunday Times suggest his fiscal headroom was £12.8bn, around £2bn less than expected.
Commenting on the prospect of tax cuts, he told the The Sunday Telegraph: “We’re only going to do so in a responsible way and in a way that supports economic growth.
“The most unconservative thing I could do would be to take risks with public finances.
“If you look at some of the great reforming chancellors, they would cut taxes when they responsibly could.
“But they did not take risks with the economy and I certainly won’t take any risks.”
Pushed on whether taxes would come down before the next election, due sometime this year, he added: “I’m going to be honest with people on Wednesday, that it’s a long path to bring it down.”
