Jeremy Hunt today announced plans to scrap “almost all” the tax cuts in last month’s mini-budget and curtail support for households with energy bills after April.
The new chancellor announced that the government will defer plans to cut the basic rate of income tax by 1p indefinitely given the current financial crisis. Truss had planned to cut it to 19p from next April.
Only the scrapping of the National Insurance rise, voted on by MPs last week, and the cut in stamp duty remains after Hunt scrapped reforms to dividend and IR35 taxation, VAT cuts for international tourists and a freeze on alcohol duties. The measures, combined with the earlier U-turns on corporation tax and the 45p rate of income tax, will save the government £32 billion.
He said that the energy price guarantee, which limits average energy bills to £2,500, will only be in place until April. It was intended to be in place for two years, but it will now be targeted and capped. The Treasury is carrying out an urgent review.
He says Liz Truss agreed that it would be wrong to make such a long-term spending commitment, when it is unclear what will happen to energy prices in the future.
He says there will then be a review. A more targeted system will then be put in place, he says.
Hunt said that “it would not be responsible to continue exposing public finances to unlimited volatility in international gas prices” as he announced that the Treasury would be looking at ways to target help to those most in need.
“The objective is to design a new approach that will cost the taxpayer significantly less than planned, whilst ensuring enough support for those in need,” he said.
Hunt added the measures announced today would not be the end of the cost cutting, warning of “more difficult decisions on both tax and spending” when he presents his fiscal statement at the end of this month.
Announcing that the income tax cut has been shelved, Hunt said: “At a time when markets are rightly demanding commitments to sustainable public finances, it is not right to borrow to fund this tax cut.”
Hunt stressed that “a central responsibility for any government is to do what’s necessary for economic stability” as he shredded Liz Truss’s economic policies.
“Governments cannot eliminate volatility in markets, but they can play their part, and we will do so because instability affects the prices of things in shops, the cost of mortgages and the values of pensions,” he said.
We will reverse almost all the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago that have not [already started the parliamentary process].
This is the big surprise in today’s announcement. It will probably go down well with the markets. But this cuts the knees under Liz Truss. The only policy that she had left that she was about to take credit for has now gone in the shredder.
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Hunt reverses ‘almost all’ of mini-budget tax cuts & cancels IR35 changes