Jeremy Hunt risks major backlash by playing down hopes of Spring Budget 2024 tax cuts

JEREMY Hunt today insisted he wants to “lighten the tax burden” – but played down expectations of mega cuts.

Ahead of the Spring Budget next month, Mr Hunt hinted that Treasury boffins have less room to whip up tax cuts than during the November Autumn Statement.

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The Chancellor made the same suggestion to ministers at a Cabinet meeting this week.

He told the BBC: “It does not look to me like we will have the same scope for cutting taxes in the spring Budget that we had in the autumn statement.

“So I need to set people’s expectations about the scale of what I am doing because people need to know that when a Conservative government cuts taxes we will do so in a responsible and sensible way.”

Mr Hunt added: “But we also want to be clear that the direction of travel we want to go in is to lighten the tax burden.”

Ahead of an expected showdown general election in November, Tory backbenchers have implored the Chancellor to continue cutting levies.

This week millions of workers will see a boost to their pay checks thanks to a 2p cut to National Insurance announced in the Autumn Statement.

A worker on a £35,000 salary should be £450 better off a year, the Treasury says.

Now MPs are begging the Chancellor to go further.

Earlier this month the chief of Britain’s economic watchdog, Richard Hughes, likened public finance forecasts last year to a “work of fiction”.

Slamming the remarks, Mr Hunt hit back: “Those words are wrong and they should not have been said.

“The Government decides spending plans and spending reviews.

“The next spending review will start in April 2025 and obviously until that point when that spending review is done, we do not publish our spending plans. No government ever has.”

It comes as the International Monetary Fun has predicted the UK will be the only major economy to shrink this year.

In a blow to millions of households, the IMF forecasted the UK economy will contract by 0.6% in 2023.

The economies of the other countries, including the United States, Germany and Japan are expected to grow between 0.1% and 1.8%.

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk