Philip Hammond rules out summer Budget
‘There will be a regular budget in November as we had always planned,’ says the Chancellor
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Your support makes all the difference.Philip Hammond has said the Government will not announce a summer Budget “or anything like that”.
Responding to a question about whether he will go ahead with £3bn worth of cuts to local authorities, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show the Budget in November will set out the Government's fiscal plans.
He said: “There will be a regular Budget in November as we had always planned.
“In that Budget, we will set out our future plans for public spending, for taxation, for fiscal balance and everything else that needs to be clear.”
The Chancellor indicated the Government will ease austerity as he admitted the public is “weary of the long slog” it has endured since the financial crash.
He said the Conservatives were “not deaf” to the message that had been delivered at the ballot box on 8 June and would be looking at the plans it had for cuts to winter fuel allowances and ending the triple lock on pensions.
But he left the door open to raising taxes and said borrowing more is “not the solution”.
Asked if he would go ahead with £3bn of cuts to local government, he replied: “We’ve set out a series of measures that are already legislated for. We have other proposals that we will now have to look at again in the light of the general election result and in the new Parliament.
Pressed on whether the Government would have to change direction, particularly if it does a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party – which is opposed to cuts to the winter fuel allowance and the end of the triple lock on pensions – he replied: “We will look at all these things. Obviously we are not deaf.
“We heard a message last week in the general election and we need to look at how we deal with the challenges we face in the economy.
“I understand that people are weary after years of hard work to rebuild the economy after the great crash of 2008-09, but we have to live within our means.
“More borrowing, which seems to be Jeremy Corbyn’s answer, is not the solution.
“We have never said we won't raise some taxes. Overall, we are a Government that believes in low taxes and we want to reduce the burden of taxes overall for working families.”
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