Jeremy Hunt doubles down on £100,000 salaries: ‘It doesn’t go as far as you might suppose’

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The chancellor of the exchequer has stood by his feedback that £100,000 is “not a huge salary” in his constituency, explaining that it “doesn’t go as far as you might think.”

Jeremy Hunt got here underneath fireplace after posting on social media earlier this week that he needed to “sort out” authorities childcare eligibility for a dad or mum who earns over £100,000.

In a publish, Mr Hunt mentioned: “I spoke to a lady from Godalming about eligibility for the government’s childcare offer which is not available if one parent is earning over £100k. That is an issue I would really like to sort out after the next election as I am aware that it is not [a] huge salary in our area if you have a mortgage to pay.”

The Godalming MP has now doubled down on his feedback, explaining that the common price of property in his constituency is over 670,000 and “if you’ve got a mortgage and you’ve got childcare costs, It doesn’t go as far as you think”.

Mr Hunt’s feedback drew criticism as £100,000 is sort of 3 times the nationwide common wage for somebody in full-time work, which is £34,963 in response to the Office for National Statistics.

Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Mr Hunt mentioned: “That’s why I want to give help to families and that’s why the childcare measures are very important.

“We weren’t able to afford to fund childcare for people on the highest salaries, but I was simply saying that’s something I’d love to be able to look at in the next parliament, but we can’t afford to do it now.”

Mr Hunt was additionally pressured to defend the Conservative’s financial document after it was put to him that the Conservatives had presided over a fall in residing requirements that’s “very, very unusual in our lifetimes”. Last month the UK entered a technical recession after GDP fell each for 4 quarters in a row.

Real GDP per particular person has additionally fallen in each quarter because the begin of 2022.

The chancellor responded that the decline in residing requirements was as a result of “two things that haven’t happened for half a century of more” within the type of a “as soon as in a century pandemic and a Seventies fashion vitality shock attributable to the invasion of Ukraine.”

He also insisted that “living standards have actually gone up since 2010 in real terms by about £1,700 per household”.

In a heated exchange between Mr Phillips and Mr Hunt, the chancellor insisted that although the government had had to take “difficult decisions” in the wake of the dual crises, the government was still committed to cutting taxes. Mr Hunt cut national insurance coverage tax by an additional 2 percentage points in his recent spring budget following another 2 per cent decrease in Autumn.

But Mr Phillips pointed out that taxes are still going up, adding: “You’ve made a couple of cuts in national insurance, but the movements of the thresholds are a thing.”

As the pair spoke over each other, Mr Hunt argued: “You can’t just mention things and then not let me respond … yes, taxes have gone up… the question in British politics is do you think they need to stay high, or do you want to start to bring them down”.

Mr Hunt insisted that his party was still committed to bringing down the tax burden: “My budgets have actually reduced the tax burden by about 0.6 per cent of GDP.

“But I’ve always been completely open about the fact that we have had to put taxes up to deal with that pandemic and it was right to support families through the pandemic and the energy crisis. But the question now is whether you want to bring them down.”

The chancellor also attacked his opposition counterpart. He stated that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is “not confronting any of those difficult decisions” and “we didn’t hear a single thing about welfare reform or controlling migration in [the] Mais lecture”.

Earlier in the week Ms Reeves delivered an hour-long lecture about Labour’s economy policies.

Mr Hunt added: “In the Mais lecture, the shadow chancellor didn’t mention bringing down the tax burden once. I have now bought down taxes significantly in an autumn statement, and in the budget.”

The chancellor’s evaluation follows feedback made by the deputy prime minister that Ms Reeves is “sheep in wolf’s clothing” after the shadow chancellor’s financial insurance policies had been in comparison with that of Margaret Thatcher.

In her Mais lecture, Ms Reeves mentioned: “As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.”

But Oliver Dowden has mentioned he was not “not fooled” by Labour’s insurance policies. Writing within the Sun on Sunday, he mentioned: “I was amused this week to see Labour’s Rachel Reeves trying to portray herself as the next Margaret Thatcher.

“Wasn’t it just a few years ago that she was knocking on doors, persuading people that the socialist Jeremy Corbyn should be in No10. But I’m not fooled, and I don’t think The Sun on Sunday readers will be. Ms Reeves’ self-portrait as Thatcher really is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing.”