Dominant Jeremy Hunt refuses to rule out new U-turn on Truss taxes

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said nothing is “off the table” when asked if he will abandon more of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s tax-cut plans, confirming that his is now the leading government voice on UK fiscal policy. 
 

Hunt declined to rule out delaying by a year the prime minister’s plan to cut the basic rate of income tax, a move that would amount to another U-turn on a key plank of Truss’s “mini-budget.” A delay could save £5 billion ($6 billion), according to a report in the Sunday Times.
 

On Friday, having already reversed two planned tax cuts, Truss requested that the newly appointed Hunt stick to the remaining measures in her fiscal plan. By Saturday, Hunt made clear that calming the markets is his priority; on Sunday he refused to rule out abandoning another of Truss’s key policies. Truss and Hunt meet on Sunday at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire. 
 

“I’m not taking anything off the table,” Hunt told the BBC on Sunday. “There is one thing we can do and that is what I am going to do, which is to show the markets, the world, indeed people watching at home, that we can properly account for every penny of our tax and spending plans.”
 

The government will not return to the kind of austerity policies seen in the early 2010s, but departments will need to find “efficiencies,” Hunt said.