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On Monday, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will speed up plans to get the UK’s public finances in order. He will do this in an effort to reassure markets that are still worried about Liz Truss’s leadership and economic plan.
His office said in a statement and on Twitter that Hunt will talk about ways to “support fiscal sustainability” in a statement this morning. He has been in charge of the Treasury for three days. Then, in the afternoon, he will talk to the House of Commons.
It said that at the end of Sunday, Hunt spoke with Governor Andrew Bailey of the Bank of England and the head of the Debt Management Office. On October 31, the Chancellor will give a full plan for the budget.
The new Chancellor spent the weekend laying out a plan for the economy that was very different from Truss’s plan. He said that taxes would need to go up and spending would need to go down. That was part of an effort to stop the UK government from having to pay even more to borrow money.
Truss has already made a number of U-turns because investors dumped the pound and gilts after she called for $45 billion in tax cuts that couldn’t be paid for. She fired her first chancellor and scrapped plans to freeze corporate taxes and lower the top tax rate.
Even though the pound went up in Asia because investors liked Hunt, economists still say there is a budget hole to fill. According to Bloomberg Economics, £24 billion more needs to be spent to make the national debt sustainable again. The Sunday Times said that Hunt wants to put off his plan to cut the basic rate of income tax by a year. This will save £5 billion ($6 billion).
The fifth paragraph has been updated with estimates of the shortfall. A previous version of this story was changed to make it clear that Hunt will say two things.
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