Labour Government could have a budget surplus of £39 billion, Jeremy Hunt claims

Jeremy Hunt has claimed the Government could have a budget surplus of £39 billion rather than the “fictitious” £22 billion blackhole it says it inherited from the Tories.

The shadow chancellor also raised concerns that welfare reform will be “untouchable” under Labour, following the backlash to its plan to means-test the winter fuel allowance.

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Mr Hunt said: “You don’t have to take my word for it, I mean just read this week’s Economist where there’s an article saying that (Rachel Reeves) could have actually not a black hole of £22 billion, but a surplus of £39 billion to play with in the budget.

“The Financial Times did a Freedom of Information request to the Treasury to ask where this fictitious £22 billion number came (from), the reply they got back form the Treasury was we can’t give you the workings because we’re not sure they’re accurate.

“Even the Labour Party don’t believe it, otherwise they wouldn’t be having this debate over the winter fuel allowance.”

He went on to say: “It is going to be, of course, a challenge to bring down the tax burden, we’d started on that journey and I don’t pretend that it doesn’t require difficult decisions, but it’s a very important strategic decision if we want to be a dynamic economy.

“And Conservatives look around the world and we say that the countries that are growing the fastest in North America and Asia tend to be ones with lower tax burdens.

“In the case of the UK, the difficult thing that we need to reform, which would both fund that but is also very good for the economy and indeed for society, is to tackle the problems we have in our welfare state.”

“My worry about the last 12 weeks is that Labour have got themselves so badly burnt with the mess they’ve got into over winter fuel allowance that welfare reform will now become untouchable for them,” he added.

On the general election result, Mr Hunt said: “We were trounced at the election.

“We got ourselves into a position where, and this is a very uncomfortable thing for Conservatives, but we got ourselves into a position where people looked at the problems the country faced, the problems in the NHS, the cost-of-living crisis and all these things, challenges with immigration, and they began to think we were part of the problem not the solution.”

He added: “We now have to earn their trust and show that we have listened, and if we win that big argument, the argument that we are actually prepared to take the difficult decisions that will secure the extraordinary future of this country, that there’s potential to do so, then we will start to get voters back from left, right and centre.

“If we follow a narrow, political strategy of saying that we’re just going to go for this group of voters on that issue, people will think we’re thinking about ourselves and not the country.”

During his conference appearance, Mr Hunt said he would have “died” for the legacy that Labour has gained after taking power.

“I mean inflation at 2%, jobs, a succession of Conservative governments that created 800 jobs for every single day they were in office, and on growth, we were the fastest growth in the G7 when Labour took over.

“The International Monetary Fund said that over the next six years we were projected to grow faster than France, Germany, Italy or Japan.

“So frankly that is a legacy I would have died to have when I became chancellor.”