Jeremy Hunt doubles down on £100,000 salaries: ‘It doesn’t go as far as you might think’

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Get our free View from Westminster email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The chancellor of the exchequer has stood by his comments that £100,000 is “not a huge salary” in his constituency, explaining that it “doesn’t go as far as you might think”. “We weren’t able to afford to fund childcare for people on the highest salaries, but I was simply saying that’s something I’d love to be able to look at in the next parliament, but we can’t afford to do it now.” Mr Hunt was also forced to defend the Conservative’s economic record after it was put to him that the Conservatives had presided over a fall in living standards that is “very, very unusual in our lifetimes”. But Mr Phillips pointed out that taxes are still going up, adding: “You’ve made a couple of cuts in national insurance, but the movements of the thresholds are a thing.” As the pair spoke over each other, Mr Hunt argued: “You can’t just mention things and then not let me respond … yes, taxes have gone up… the question in British politics is do you think they need to stay high, or do you want to start to bring them down.” open image in gallery Hunt challenged shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves on the contents of her Mais lecture Mr Hunt insisted that his party was still committed to bringing down the tax burden: “My budgets have actually reduced the tax burden by about 0.6 per cent of GDP. In her Mais lecture, Ms Reeves said: “As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.” But Oliver Dowden has said he was not “not fooled” by Labour’s policies.