Britain’s new Treasury chief has acknowledged mistakes made by his predecessor and suggested that he may reverse much of Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss’ tax-cutting plans.
Jeremy Hunt leaves 10 Downing Street in London after he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer following the resignation of Kwasi Kwarteng, Friday Oct. 14, 2022. Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng said he has accepted Prime Minister Liz Truss' request he"stand aside" as Chancellor, paying the price for the chaos unleashed by his mini-budget.
Truss, a free-market libertarian, had previously insisted that her tax-cutting plans were what Britain needs to boost economic growth. But a “mini-budget” that she and Kwarteng unveiled three weeks ago, which promised 45 billion pounds in tax cuts without explaining how the government would pay for them, sent the markets and the British pound tumbling and left her credibility in tatters.
“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,” Hunt told the BBC Saturday. “Spending will not rise by as much as people would like and all government departments are going to have to find more efficiencies than they were planning to. And some taxes will not be cut as quickly as people want," he said.
Truss' U-turn on her pledge to stop a planned rise in corporation tax came after an earlier climbdown on her plans to cut the top rate of income tax for the highest earners.
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