'I wouldn't use her words' - Hunt implicitly rejects Braverman's critique of multiculturalism

 

2h ago

09.58 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/oct/02/conservative-party-conference-jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-rishi-sunak-tory-labour-politics-latest-updates?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-651a82818f08b90f4edd5e24#block-651a82818f08b90f4edd5e24

 

'I wouldn't use her words' - Hunt implicitly rejects Braverman's critique of multiculturalism

In an interview with TalkTV this morning, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, implicitly rejected what Suella Braverman said in her immigration speech last week about multiculturalism having failed.

 

Asked about the speech, Hunt, whose wife is Chinese, said:

 

I am married to an immigrant and I’ve always believed that we benefit massively as a country from welcoming the brightest and best from all over the world.

 

Suella Braverman wouldn’t use my words, I wouldn’t use her words.

 

But she’s absolutely right that the social contract that makes Britain one of the most tolerant countries in the world when it comes to immigrants depends on fairness.

 

Rishi Sunak (here) and Priti Patel, the former home secretary, (here) are among the many Tories who have criticised what Braverman said about multiculturalism in her speech. But there have been much more support for her call for the UK to be willing to consider leaving the European convention on human rights.

 

Updated at 10.05 BST

2h ago

09.33 BST

Hunt says he does not accept IFS claim government mainly to blame for higher taxes, and that they're permanent

In a report last week the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the current parliament was likely to mark “a decisive and permanent shift to a higher-tax economy”.

 

In its report, it also said that although this was partly because of the pandemic, government decisions taken before Covid were a more important factor. It said:

 

Only during and in the immediate aftermath of the two world wars have government revenues grown by as much as they have in the period since 2019. To some extent, this ought not to be a surprise: the Covid-19 pandemic represented the most significant economic dislocation since the second world war. But while the response to the pandemic and its after-effects does explain some of the tax rises announced in recent years, it is far from the only – or even the most significant – explanation. Instead, tax rises have largely been the consequence of a desire for higher government spending on things that pre-date the pandemic (such as manifesto promises to expand the NHS workforce and hire more police officers, and a September 2019 declaration to be ‘turning the page on austerity’).

 

In his interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said he did not agree with the IFS on both these points.

 

Asked about the IFS saying government decisions, not Covid, were primarily to blame for taxes rising, he said:

 

I disagree with that analysis. One of the biggest reasons that we’ve had to see taxes go up is because our debt interest payments have gone up as a result of the energy shock. That has an enormous pressure on the public purse.

 

The other thing I disagree with the IFS on – normally I don’t disagree with them, I do this time – is their suggestion this is a permanent rise in the level of taxation. I don’t believe it has to be. If we are prepared to take difficult decisions about the way we spent taxpayers’ money, to reform the deliver of public services, to reform the welfare state, there’s a chance to bring taxes down. But there aren’t any short cuts.

 

Updated at 09.37 BST

2h ago

09.02 BST

Hunt refuses to endorse Sunak's claim that inflation is a tax

While Rishi Sunak is generally more honest than Boris Johnson, and more realistic than Liz Truss, he is sometimes prone to talking nonsense and there was a good example yesterday when, in his interview with Laura Kuenssberg, he claimed that inflation was a tax.

 

Sunak said that the best tax cut he could deliver for the nation was a cut in inflation. When Kuenssberg correctly pointed out that inflation isn’t a tax, Sunak became agitated and irate, told her that he completely disagreed and said: “Inflation is a tax. It’s a tax that impact the poorest people the most.”

 

What he meant was that it functions like a tax – a point he made later when he said “it effectively acts as a tax” – but factually what he sought to lecture Kuenssberg on economics was wrong.

 

This morning, in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Jeremy Hunt refused to defend Sunak’s claim that inflation is a tax.

 

Hunt was being interviewed by the GMB presenter Ed Balls, a former Labour shadow chancellor, who said that even if inflation were to fall from 10% to 5%, prices would still be rising. How was that a tax cut?

 

Hunt claimed that was not what Sunak said. Halving inflation would mean take-home income would be higher than otherwise, he claimed.

 

Balls said, with prices rising, people would still be worse off. Hunt did not challenge this. “Everyone is made worse off by high inflation, and that’s why it must be our number one focus to bring it down,” he said.

 

Balls asked Hunt again to confirm that that was not a tax cut. Hunt did not contest that, but he said “reducing inflation compared to the level it would have been [means] that people’s household income is higher than it otherwise would have been”.