I’d prefer to be Nigel Lawson but I need to be prudent like Gordon Brown, says Jeremy Hunt ahead of Budget

Chancellor commends Conservative predecessor Lord Lawson, known for his ‘bold’ tax cuts while serving for Margaret Thatcher

Jeremy Hunt has said he wants to be Nigel Lawson in Wednesday’s Budget but fiscal constraints will force him to be a “prudent” Gordon Brown instead.
The Chancellor expressed admiration for his tax-cutting Conservative predecessor, Lord Lawson, who died last year aged 91. However, he downplayed expectations for flashy pre-election giveaways.
Instead, Mr Hunt repeatedly emphasised how he would keep a tight hold of the purse strings with his “prudent” Budget. He appeared to be referencing Gordon Brown’s early years at the Treasury, who often invoked “prudence” in his management of public finances.
“It’s going to be a prudent and responsible budget for long-term growth,” Mr Hunt told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday morning.
“When it comes to tax cuts I do believe when you look around the world, the countries with lower tax tend to grow faster – America, Asia.
“So in the long run, we need to move back to being a lower-taxed, more lightly regulated economy, but it would be deeply unconservative to cut taxes in a way that increased borrowing.
“I think of the great tax-cutting budgets of the past – Nigel Lawson’s budget in 1988. The reason that was so significant is because those tax cuts were permanent and people need to know that these are tax cuts we can really afford.”
Sir John Redwood, who ran Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit during Lord Lawson’s time at the Treasury, said Mr Hunt had misunderstood the example set by the former chancellor.
“He doesn’t understand the first thing about Nigel Lawson and Margaret Thatcher’s tax cutting strategy,” he told The Telegraph.
“The key to it all was that it raised more revenue … we’d found the magic way of taxing the rich more. The rich would stay and pay our taxes.”
There are a number of demands for Treasury attention ahead of the budget that Mr Hunt will deliver on Wednesday.
In addition to the usual pressure for a government giveaway before the election, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has urged the Chancellor to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP amid tensions with Russia.
The “bold action” – which is expected to cost around £9 billion – would “resonate with our allies and adversaries”, Mr Shapps wrote to Mr Hunt, as reported by The Telegraph on Saturday.
However, Mr Hunt signalled that extra spending on the military first needed to be underpinned by a strong economy.
“If we’re going to spend the money on defence as I believe we will need to do in the future, what we need to have is a healthy growing economy,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg.
“Every decision that I take will be a prudent and responsible long-term decision.”
Recommended
Mr Hunt also said he wanted public spending to be more efficient to satisfy voter demands for European-level services paid for by US taxation levels.
The civil service should be reduced to pre-pandemic levels, he argued, hitting out at mandarins for wasting taxpayers’ money on diversity officers.
“What most people want is better public services and a lower tax burden. It’s the old thing isn’t it: can we have European public services and American levels of tax?” he said.
“The only way that we have a chance of delivering something like that is by spending the money that we spend on public services much more efficiently.”
He added: “I think that breaking glass ceilings should be the job of every boss in every public sector organisation but I’m not convinced that paying people large sums of money specifically to do those jobs is the right thing.
“I think that’s subcontracting the responsibility. More broadly, I think the civil service should return to the levels that it was pre-Covid.”