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Economic Development

Chancellor to make emergency statement with more U-turns expected

Jeremy Hunt will speak to the Commons today to “ensure sustainable public finances underpin economic growth”

Jeremy Hunt arrives in Downing Street in London after he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.(Image: PA)

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to set out billions of pounds of savings and U-turns on the Government’s disastrous ‘mini Budget’ after announcing an emergency statement on Monday.

Mr Hunt, who was appointed on Friday after predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked by Prime Minister Liz Truss, had been due to speak on the Government’s medium-term fiscal plan on October 31 but will announce some measures today to “ensure sustainable public finances underpin economic growth”, the Treasury said.

After saying at the weekend that Mr Kwarteng’s plan had gone “too far, too fast”, Mr Hunt has met the Prime Minister over the weekend, as well as the Governor of the Bank of England and the Head of the Debt Management Office to brief them on the plans.

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The move comes as Ms Truss faces huge unrest within her own party, with three MPs publicly calling for her to stand down only weeks into her Premiership.

After Mr Kwarteng’s original fiscal plan sent the markets into meltdown, the Government U-turned on plans for a tax cut for high earners, while on Friday Ms Truss said she would not go ahead with plans to reduce corporation tax.

It is expected that Mr Hunt will reduce other tax cutting measures today, after indicating over the weekend that Government departments would have to find more spending cuts.

The scramble to calm the markets comes after a new poll, first published in the Guardian, predicted a landslide for Labour and wipe-out for the Tories. The poll, by Opinium for the Trades Union Congress and using the MRP method to estimate constituency-level results, put Labour on 411 seats compared to the Tories on 137.