Listen: Jeremy Hunt labelled ‘fiscal drag queen’ in heated BBC interview
Hunt called 'fiscal drag queen' during post-Budget interviewToday, BBC Radio 4
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00:00 What about the millions, yeah and those are two Labour policies which we'll come back to, very keen to, but what about the millions of people who as a result of fiscal drag are going to be paying significantly more by the end of this Parliament than they were at the start of this Parliament?
00:12 They call you the fiscal drag queen of British politics don't they and with good reason.
00:15 The net effect of your time in number 11 is that taxes are still going up.
00:19 It's just they're not going up by as much as they were six months ago but they're still going up aren't they?
00:23 We're still going to have by the end of this Parliament taxes at their highest level since 1948.
00:29 Now there might be good reasons for that but it's a bit rich for you to cast yourself as a tax cutting Chancellor when taxes are going up to record levels which is why I want you to be frank with people and frank with our listeners that there are losers from your plans as well as winners.
00:43 Well let's talk about this very frankly.
00:47 We decided to support families when we had a once in a century pandemic, things like the furlough scheme saving over 10 million jobs.
00:57 When we had a cost of living crisis we paid around half people's electricity bills.
01:02 That was the right thing to do.
01:03 Taxes did have to go up.
01:05 The choice now is do we want them to stay high or do we want to start to bring them down?
01:10 Now I happen to believe if you look around the world the fastest growing economies are the ones in North America and Asia which tend to have lower tax rates so I want to make a start on bringing down taxes.
01:22 I've never said for one moment that I can bring them right down all in one go but let's look at someone on average wage.
01:30 Next year you talked about fiscal drag.
01:32 I had nothing I've been called a drag queen before by the way Amol but there we are.
01:35 It was a fiscal drag queen, fiscal drag queen.
01:37 Certainly not my phrase but it might be opposite.
01:39 You talked about fiscal drag.
01:41 Well someone on the average wage will see their taxes go up in the coming year because of the fact that we're not increasing thresholds with inflation by just over 230 pounds.
01:52 They'll see their taxes come down because of the national insurance cuts by 900 pounds.
01:57 So they will see a significant reduction as a result of the decisions that I've taken.
02:02 Does that take the taxes they pay all the way back to where they were before the pandemic?
02:07 No, not yet but it is a start and we are the only party in British politics who's saying we should go on that journey but we do it in a responsible way.
02:16 We've now had an autumn statement and a budget where we have reduced the tax burden on ordinary families without increasing borrowing but also prioritizing public services and making sure they have the resources they need with a big investment program to make the NHS more efficient.