Closing summary
Jeremy Hunt has signalled tax cuts will only come “when the time is right” and be matched by “spending restraint”. In a speech at Bloomberg designed to set out ambitions for achieving Rishi Sunak’s pledge to grow the economy, Hunt sought to temper restive Conservative backbenchers’ expectations ahead of the budget in March.
The chancellor said he hoped to inject what he described as much-needed optimism about the country’s future, saying he wanted Britain to “have nothing less than the most competitive tax regime of any major country”. He also targeted economic inactivity and urged those who retired early after the Covid pandemic, or struggled to find a new job after the furlough scheme ended, to rejoin the workforce.
Hunt was criticised by the public sector union Unison for “not even trying” to unlock the health pay stalemate after his speech this morning failed to address the ongoing dispute that risks dragging on for months. The chancellor’s “grand vision for the future completely ignores vital public services”, Unison’s general secretary, Christina McAnea, said in a statement.
Business groups also criticised Hunt’s speech for being “empty” and having “little meat on the bones of his vision”. Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said the Conservatives “have no plan for now, and no plan for the future”.
Rishi Sunak has said his government is “committed to delivering all the plans that it’s announced with rail” following reports that it was considering scaling the HS2 high-speed rail project back because of rising costs. His chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, also said he did not see “any conceivable circumstances” in which the planned Euston terminus would not go ahead.
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has urged teachers and school leaders in England to keep schools open for the sake of children during the strikes that start next week. The National Education Union’s members will kick off planned industrial action with a national strike on 1 February that is expected to affect many schools in England and Wales.
The former Conservative party chairman, Jake Berry, has said Rishi Sunak should have held an “endorsement vote” to show he had the support of the party’s membership. A faction of Conservative members feel they were “denied a vote”, while there is a “perception” that Tory MPs are “disconnected from our membership”, Berry told GB News.
Carol Vorderman has demanded Rishi Sunak be investigated for insider trading and called for more “accountability and transparency” within the government. Vorderman referred to a November 2020 from the Guardian on Sunak refusing to disclose whether he would profit from a surge in the share price of Moderna, one of the biggest investments held by the hedge fund he co-founded before entering parliament.
Matt Hancock has so far donated just 3% of the fee he was paid for appearing on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! to charity, it has been revealed. Earlier this month Hancock declared he had earned £45,000 from appearing on another reality TV show – Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Boris Johnson picked up an advance of more than £500,000 for his forthcoming memoir, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests. It comes after MPs were told on Thursday that taxpayers may face a bill of more than £222,000 to cover Johnson’s legal fees to defend himself in the Partygate inquiry.
Rishi Sunak has said his government is “committed to delivering all the plans that it’s announced with rail” following reports that it was considering scaling the HS2 high-speed rail project back because of rising costs.
Speaking to broadcasters this afternoon, Sunak said:
The government is committed to delivering all the plans that it’s announced with rail, but as well as these very large rail schemes, which are of course important, what I’m also keen to do is make sure that the government invests in local transportation around the areas where people live, whether that’s better local roads, or we’re filling in potholes, putting in more bus lanes, road junctions, bypasses.
All the day-to-day bits of transport infrastructure that people also care about. We’re getting on and delivering those too.
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Why Jeremy Hunt's economic plan is a letdown
Brexit will shake Britons out of their comfortable torpor, turn them into risk-takers and put the UK at the forefront of the digital revolution – that was Jeremy Hunt’s message in his much-trailed speech on growing the UK economy.
The chancellor came to Bloomberg’s HQ in the City of London on Friday seeking to raise the country’s spirits, hail the split with Brussels and dispel the “declinism” he says saps Britain’s energy.
He came armed with the prime minister’s five pledges and some of his own – “the four Es” – to show he has a plan to make Britain’s post-Brexit economy boom. But those four steps – enterprise, education, employment and everywhere – are broad and frustratingly lack any real substance.
Read the full analysis from my colleague Phillip Inman here:
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The former Conservative party chair, Jake Berry, has said Rishi Sunak should have held an “endorsement vote” to show he had the support of the party’s membership.
A faction of Conservative members feel they were “denied a vote”, while there is a “perception” that Tory MPs are “disconnected from our membership”, Berry told GB News.
He said:
I actually think it’s a great pity for Rishi Sunak that we didn’t have a vote of members. Because in the summer, fine Conservative that he is, he struggled actually to get the support of Conservative party members – as, funnily enough, did Jeremy Hunt in the previous leadership election.
I think even though he absolutely got the majority of the Conservative members of parliament – and I support him as prime minister in everything he does – the challenge he has is, even if it’s not true, there’s a perception of the Conservative parliamentary party now being disconnected from our membership.
He added that he thought Sunak “would have won it well” if he had asked the membership to vote to endorse him but, instead, a narrative has been allowed to develop about members being “denied that vote”.
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Carol Vorderman has demanded Rishi Sunak be investigated for insider trading following reports that the prime minister had shares in the Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna.
Vorderman called for more “accountability and transparency” within the government as she discussed the headlines on This Morning today.
Referring to the Guardian’s story from November 2020 on Sunak refusing to disclose whether he would profit from a surge in the share price of Moderna, one of the biggest investments held by the hedge fund he co-founded before entering parliament, she said:
Rishi Sunak, our prime minister, co-founded a hedge fund. It invested in the last few years £1bn in Moderna shares. Rishi Sunak said he has put all his assets into a blind trust. He has refused to say whether he holds assets in the hedge fund and therefore in Moderna.
That man came out in front of 10 Downing Street and said accountability and transparency and all of this. If you are true to your word Rishi Sunak, do you own shares in Moderna? Because if you do, are we now talking about insider trading?
“Do you own shares in Moderna #RishiSunak, ‘cos if you do, are we now talking about insider trading?” @carolvorders
— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) January 27, 2023
Sunak co-founded a hedge fund that invested £1b in Moderna shares & refuses to say if he holds assets in the hedge fund & therefore Moderna pic.twitter.com/BdJDXFZ0l0 https://t.co/JeZdN7xRax
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Here’s more reaction to the chancellor’s speech this morning. The environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth said Jeremy Hunt “talked about the importance of education, but there is no coherent green jobs and skills plan”.
The group’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said:
The only economy of the future is the green economy and right now, except for offshore wind, the UK is losing the race for investment. Instead, the government is sending completely wrong signals by giving the go-ahead to a coal mine in Cumbria and new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
He called on the government to do more “to seize the huge opportunities a sustainable future will bring”.
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Here’s a clip of the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, speaking this morning to an audience of City executives and journalists in London, where he said the government’s focus was on cutting inflation.
Hunt emphasised his optimistic outlook about the UK’s future in a speech designed to set out ambitions for achieving Rishi Sunak’s pledge of economic growth.
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Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has urged teachers and school leaders in England to keep schools open for the sake of children during the strikes that start next week.
Keegan told the Church of England’s national education conference in London on Friday morning:
For our teachers to have an impact they need to be in school. I understand the pressures that most people, all of us, are facing, including our teachers, as we struggle with some of the economic challenges during the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. Inflation is eating away at all of our pay cheques.
Keegan told the conference she had delivered a £2bn boost for school spending in last year’s autumn statement, adding that “it may not have been smart for me to have used my political capital in the first few weeks” as education secretary.
Keegan ended by urging teachers to “work with me to keep as many schools open and as many children in school as possible during the disruptive strike action”.
The National Education Union’s members will kick off planned industrial action with a national strike on 1 February that is expected to affect many schools in England and Wales.
The education secretary confirmed that she supported Rishi Sunak’s aim to extend compulsory maths lessons beyond the age of 16 in England’s schools and colleges, saying:
It may not be very welcome to everyone but I do agree with the prime minister on some kind of maths to [the age of] 18. We use maths every day in our lives, from grocery shopping, to buying financial products or mortgages, to understanding good debt from bad debt. And we must equip children to deal with life’s complexities.
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Hunt ‘not even trying’ to settle NHS pay dispute, says Unison
Jeremy Hunt has been criticised by the public sector union Unison for “not even trying” to unlock the health pay stalemate after his speech this morning failed to address the ongoing dispute that risks dragging on for months.
The chancellor’s “grand vision for the future completely ignores vital public services”, Unison’s general secretary, Christina McAnea, said in a statement.
She added:
The chancellor holds the key to unlock the damaging health pay dispute and rebuild the NHS, but he’s not even trying.
No plan for the economy can succeed unless the government also focuses on essential services. Paying proper wages will halt the staff exodus and mean there’s more money to spend in the local high street.
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British taxpayers have become shareholders in a further 53 companies backed by a government rescue funding scheme, including a company that makes carbon-negative period products, a firm producing meat cultivated directly from cells without the use of animals, and a “holistic” whisky distiller.
The British Business Bank’s Future Fund was set up by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor. It was established during the height of the Covid pandemic to support startups and innovative firms through the crisis, and has given 1,190 companies funding worth £1.14bn in total.
About half of those firms have now had those loans converted to equity after they raised third-party funding that at least matched that from the government. This means taxpayers now have equity stakes in 515 companies, an increase of 53 companies in the fourth quarter.
The latest data reveals stakes in companies including Sanitary Owl Ltd, a certified B Corp that makes toxin-free carbon negative period products under the brand Dame, and Roslin Technologies, an Edinburgh-based firm that produces meat produced directly from cells without the use of animals.
Also on the list is the Lakes Distillery, which practises holistic whisky making, and Cred Investments, which helps professional footballers accelerate their savings and investments.
Taxpayers also have a share in Sheep Included, a London-based clothing brand that makes carbon-negative knitwear, and Beckley Psytech, which develops psychedelic medicines for patients with psychiatric disorders.
Other companies that taxpayers now have a slice of include Edgify, which has developed AI technology for self-checkouts, Methera Global, which provides super-fast broadband using satellites, and Solar Options for Schools, which helps make schools more sustainable by installing solar panels.
Previous data releases have revealed taxpayers have stakes in companies ranging from the sex-party planning firm Killing Kittens, and a medical cannabis farm, to a yoghurt-bar business.
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Business groups call Jeremy Hunt's speech 'empty' and with 'little meat on the bones'
Business groups have criticised chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s speech this morning for being “empty” and having “little meat on the bones of his vision”.
The chief economist of the Institute of Directors, Kitty Ussher, said it was good to see Hunt “championing Britain’s strengths to potential investors”, in particular its hi-tech industries, universities and financial markets.
She added:
But while he referenced the current prime minister’s Mais lecture of a year ago that opened the door to using the tax system to encourage investment in people, capital and ideas, we heard nothing about how it would be done.
The chancellor himself said today’s speech was “not a series of measures or announcements”. We would therefore add a fifth E for ‘empty’ to his 4 Es economic framework.
The British Chambers of Commerce’s director general, Shevaun Haviland, said Hunt was “right to be optimistic for the future of British businesses, which are desperate to grow and prosper”.
She said:
But beyond pledges to introduce investment zones and to use reform of solvency II to unlock capital, there was very little meat on the bones of his vision. Crucially, he missed out two Es when he detailed his focus on ‘enterprise, education, employment and everywhere’.
Without addressing the issues of energy and exports, our economic growth will continue to be stunted.
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Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, and his deputy, Angela Rayner, have been photographed in Harlow, Essex, today meeting frontline health workers.
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Jeremy Hunt has been accused by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) of ignoring the “crisis” in public services during his speech this morning.
The chancellor ignored the “fundamental issue of public sector pay” and “massive staffing crisis” hitting the country’s schools, hospitals, care homes and other key services, the TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, said.
He added:
Public servants will be deeply worried about the chancellor’s warnings of further restraint. We know that is usually code for cuts.
Hunt and Rishi Sunak “are key to unlocking the current industrial disputes” and “giving public services the funding they desperately need”, he said.
We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the 2010s when years of under-investment gutted frontline services and ultimately led to the staffing exodus we are seeing today.
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Controversial proposed powers for police to pre-emptively ban protests they believe are likely to cause “serious disruption” could be killed in the House of Lords if Labour whips its benches to vote against them, the Green peer Jenny Jones has said.
The powers, described as “a blank cheque to shut down dissent”, were introduced by the government this month in late amendments to a public order bill that already includes a series of anti-protest measures.
According to the civil rights group Liberty, the proposals give police expansive powers to restrict protests they believe will cause “more than minor” impacts on everyday activities. They also give senior officers the power to treat several protests as one demonstration, allowing them to impose conditions on all of them collectively.
No 10 has said the changes would make clear that police did not need “to wait for disruption to take place” before shutting down protests. The amendments emerged amid politicians’ frustration at seeing police protecting Just Stop Oil protesters on slow marches along London’s busiest roads.
On Monday, the bill reaches report stage in the Lords. If peers vote the amendments down, they cannot be revived in the Commons.
Lady Jones said:
The Lords have a rare opportunity to stop the draconian shift towards pre-crime. Under these proposals, the police will be able to ban protests that they think might cause more than minor disruption.
A government that bans strikes, introduces voter suppression and stops effective protest is destroying democracy from within. Our big hope is that the Labour peers will pull out all the stops and join with the rest of us who aim to stop pre-crime and these other draconian proposals from becoming law.
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Boris Johnson picked up an advance of more than £500,000 for his forthcoming memoir, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests.
Johnson’s latest entry in the register says he “received £510,000 as an advance on an upcoming book yet to be published” – even though he has so far done just 10 hours of work on it.
It comes after MPs were told on Thursday that taxpayers may face a bill of more than £222,000 to cover Johnson’s legal fees to defend himself in the Partygate inquiry.
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Jeremy Hunt says tax cuts will only come ‘when the time is right’
Jeremy Hunt has signalled tax cuts will only come “when the time is right” and be matched by “spending restraint”, as he seeks to temper restive Conservative backbenchers’ expectations ahead of the budget in March.
However, the chancellor said he hoped to inject what he described as much-needed optimism about the country’s future, saying he wanted Britain to “have nothing less than the most competitive tax regime of any major country”.
In a speech at Bloomberg designed to set out ambitions for achieving Rishi Sunak’s pledge to grow the economy, Hunt targeted economic inactivity and urged those who retired early after the Covid pandemic, or struggled to find a new job after the furlough scheme ended, to rejoin the workforce.
“We need you, and we will look at the conditions necessary to make it worth your while,” the chancellor said.
Hunt blamed Britain’s woes on “economic headwinds” that affected many countries, citing favourable growth statistics, and inflation remaining higher in 14 European Union countries. “Declinism about Britain is just wrong,” he said.
However, after pressure from Tory MPs – including the Conservative Growth Group founded by allies of Liz Truss – Hunt stressed that investment would only follow financial stability, and gave little hope that his March budget would reduce the tax burden.
“Confidence in the future starts with honesty about the present,” he said.
Hunt said “we need lower taxes” and that high rates “affect the incentives” of businesses to invest, but stressed that “sound money must come first”.
“Our ambition should be to have nothing less than the most competitive tax regime of every major country,” he said, but that would mean “restraint on spending”.
Read the full report by my colleague Aubrey Allegretti here:
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Jeremy Hunt: 'I haven't paid an HMRC fine'
Jeremy Hunt has been asked again, for the third time today, if he had ever paid a HMRC penalty. He told BBC News:
I don’t normally comment about my own tax records.
But, I am Chancellor, so, for the record: I haven’t paid an HMRC fine.
Earlier he said he didn’t “think that people at home are remotely interested in personal tax affairs”.
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Hunt does not see ‘any conceivable circumstances’ HS2 would not run to central London
The chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said the government is committed to the country’s HS2 high-speed rail line ending at the Euston station in central London.
Asked if ministers were committed to HS2 going “all the way to Euston”, he told BBC News:
Yes we are. I don’t see any conceivable circumstance in which that would not end up at Euston.
He added:
I prioritised HS2 in the autumn statement. We have not got a good record in this country of delivering complex, expensive infrastructure quickly, but I’m incredibly proud that, for the first time in this last decade, under a Conservative government, we have shovels in the ground building HS2 and we’re going to make it happen.
The former culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, will host a new Friday night talkshow on TalkTV.
The first instalment of her programme, which starts on 3 February, will feature an interview with former prime minister Boris Johnson, of which Dorries has been a long-time supporter.
TalkTV described her upcoming show as “an irreverent look at the week’s news and a lively mix of topical chat with guests from the world of politics, culture and sport”.
It comes after fellow Tory MP and Johnson supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg announced he was joining GB News to host his own show.
The Labour party will pass a right to roam act if it comes to power, the Guardian can reveal, after widespread outcry when wild camping was outlawed on Dartmoor.
In the bill, which is currently being drawn up by the party amid widespread but careful optimism that the next general election will see Labour return to office, there could be a new law that would allow national parks to adopt the right to wild camp, as well as expanding public access to woodlands and waterways.
Jim McMahon, the shadow environment secretary, said the court decision earlier this month to overturn the long-held right in the national park – the only place in England and Wales the ability still existed – shows that there needs to be a rethink of land access.
While the right to roam has been narrowly defined as the right to walk from A to B, he said this was missing the point and not in the spirit of those who first proposed the idea.
He said: “What I am interested in is the right to experience, the right to enjoy and the right to explore,” meaning that people should be allowed to fully enjoy an area, including taking part in activities such as swimming, camping, climbing and birdwatching rather than simply walking.
Tories ‘have no plan for now, and no plan for the future’, says Labour
Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has responded to Jeremy Hunt’s speech this morning, saying the Conservatives “have no plan for now, and no plan for the future”.
She said:
Britain has so much potential. From creating good, new jobs in the industries of the future, to making our country the best place to start and grow a business, Labour’s proper plan for growth will grasp those opportunities and make our economy stronger to face up to the challenges.
Thirteen years of Tory economic failure have left living standards and growth on the floor, crashed our economy, and driven up mortgages and bills.
The Tories have no plan for now, and no plan for the future.
It’s time for a Labour government that will build a better Britain.
Labour has responded to reports that Nadhim Zahawi facing pressure to reveal the source of about £30m of unsecured loans made to his wife’s UK property company.
As we reported yesterday, those loans were used to finance parts of a large UK property portfolio, reported last year as worth about £100m, and were declared in company accounts which span a period from 2017 to 2021 but give no information about who the lenders are.
The calls for greater transparency are the latest request for the former chancellor to explain how his family’s fortune has been managed, after he became embroiled in a mounting controversy over his tax affairs that prompted the government to launch an ethics investigation.
Labour party chair, Annaliese Dodds, said:
The constant drip drip of rumour and revelations might be embarrassing for Nadhim Zahawi and Rishi Sunak, but it is toxic for the public’s confidence in politicians.
Rather than delaying and making excuses, Rishi Sunak should take responsibility for appointing Nadhim Zahawi to his cabinet despite his promise of ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability at all levels’, grow a backbone and sack him.
Only Labour has a plan to clean up politics with a genuinely independent Integrity and Ethics Commission to restore standards in public life.
The government remains committed to HS2, the chancellor Jeremy Hunt insisted while speaking earlier, describing it as a “specific priority” for him in the Autumns statement.
Hunt on HS2 (reportedly not coming all the way to Euston) “HS2 was a specific priority in the autumn statement… it is a source of pride we have shovels in the ground”
— Paul Kelso (@pkelso) January 27, 2023
Matt Hancock has so far donated just 3% of the fee he was paid for appearing on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! to charity, it has been revealed.
The former health secretary received £320,000 for his stint on the reality show, of which £10,000 was donated to charity, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests.
As a result of the appearance, he lost the Tory whip. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said he was “disappointed” at Hancock’s decision to travel to Australia.
The West Suffolk MP, who is still suspended from the Conservative party, also received £48,000 for his Pandemic Diaries book, the register reveals.
A spokesperson for Hancock told BBC News:
As well as raising the profile of his dyslexia campaign in front of 11 million viewers, Matt’s donated £10,000 to St Nicholas Hospice in Suffolk and the British Dyslexia Association.
Earlier this month Hancock declared he had earned £45,000 from appearing on another reality TV show – Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Hunt 'not going to talk about personal tax affairs'
Hunt is asked by the FT if he has ever paid a penalty to HMRC.
He says he will not talk about his personal tax affairs, adding:
I don’t think there’s anything you’d find interesting to write about, if I can put it that way.
I just asked chancellor Jeremy Hunt if he has ever paid a penalty to HMRC:
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) January 27, 2023
“I’m not talking about my personal tax affairs but you wouldn’t find anything interesting to read about”
Later he is pressed again on whether he has paid a tax penalty to HMRC, Hunt says he doesn’t “think that people at home are remotely interested in personal tax affairs”.
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Hunt says Brexit is an opportunity to work with regulators to create an economic environment which is “more innovation-friendly, and more growth-focused”.
He says he wants to create an “enterprise culture built on low taxes, reward for risk, access to capital and smarter regulation”.
On employment, the UK will “never harness the full potential of our country unless we unlock it for each and every one of our citizens”. He says:
Nor will we fix our productivity puzzle unless everyone who can participate does. So to those who retired early after the pandemic, or haven’t found the right role after furlough, I say: Britain needs you.
He says about one-fifth of working-age adults are economically inactive – about 6.6 million people. Around 5 million people do not want to work, he adds.
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Hunt: ‘We need lower taxes’
Hunt says the government’s plan for growth is “necessitated, energised and made possible” by Brexit, and that the UK needs to “make Brexit a catalyst for bold choices”.
Brexit allows us to “take advantage of the nimbleness and flexibility it makes possible”, he says.
Hunt says there are the “four Es of economic growth and prosperity”: enterprise, education, employment and everywhere.
In order to speak the creation of more new businesses, “firstly we need lower taxes”, he says.
High taxes directly affect the incentives which determine decisions by entrepreneurs, investors or larger companies, about whether to pursue their ambitions in Britain
He says:
Sound money must come first but our ambition must be nothing less than to have the most competitive tax regime of any major country.
That means “restraint on tax spending”, he says. He adds:
In case anyone is in any doubt about who will actually deliver that restraint to make a low tax economy possible, I gently point out that in the three weeks since Labour promised no big government chequebook they have made £45bn of unfunded spending commitments.
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Hunt wants to 'turn the UK into the next Silicon Valley’
Hunt says the UK is “powerfully positioned” to play a leading role in the innovation industries “that will shape and define this century”.
Instead of talking about Britain’s economic decline, he said he was focused on growth industries, including digital technology and the shift to new, high-value industries such as renewable power and advanced manufacturing.
He says the government is determined to achieve his aspirations to help Britain become a “technology superpower”.
He says:
I want the world’s tech entrepreneurs, life science innovators and green tech companies to come to the UK because it offers the best possible place to make their visions happen.
The UK government will “back you to the hilt”, he says.
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Talk of UK's decline wrong in the past and wrong today - Hunt
Hunt says he wants the UK to be one of the most prosperous countries in Europe and outlines four pillars of the government’s plan to get there.
In order to achieve that plan for prosperity in growth, he says we will need “optimism, which is in rather short supply”.
He says columnists from both the left and right have been talking about Britain going through an “existential crisis” and “teetering on the edge and all we can hope for is that things don’t get worse”. He says:
I welcome the debate. But chancellors too are allowed their say. And I say simply this declinism about Britain is just wrong. It’s always been wrong in the past and it’s wrong today.
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Hunt: the best tax cut right now is a cut to inflation
Hunt says risk-taking by individuals and businesses can only happen when governments provide economic and financial stability. He says:
The best tax cut right now is a cut in inflation.
He says the plan that he set out in the autumn statement “tackles that root cause of instability in the British economy”.
Rishi Sunak talked about having inflation as one of his five key priorities, but Hunt says he wants to talk about the PM’s second priority: to grow the economy.
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Jeremy Hunt has started speaking. He begins by saying that digital technology has “transformed nearly every aspect of our economic lives”.
The UK has been dealing with “economic headwinds caused by a decade of black swan events”, Hunt says – a financial crisis, an international energy crisis.
He says the Conservative party “understands better than others the importance of low taxes in creating incentives and fostering the animal spirits that spur economic growth”.
Updated
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was scheduled to speak at 9.20am, but his address from Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London has been slightly delayed.
We will be following it live when he does speak.
The number of EU students enrolling in British universities has more than halved since Brexit – with sharp declines in scholars from Italy, Germany and France, figures reveal.
Brexit is seen as the primary deterrent, with home fees and student finance no longer available to EU students who do not already live in the UK with settled or pre-settled status.
“The significant decrease shown in EU first-year student enrolments can be attributed to changes in fees eligibility,” said the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which has published the data for the first full post-Brexit year.
Before Brexit, students paid home fees of just over £9,000 and had student finance available. Fees have risen as high as £38,000 after Brexit.
The number of students from the EU who enrolled for the first year of an undergraduate or postgraduate course was down from 66,680 the year before Brexit came into force, 2020, to 31,000 in 2021. This was the first year EU students were treated the same as those coming from China or India.
But the impact of Brexit is deepest at undergraduate level, with just 13,155 EU students enrolling in 2021 for the first year of a primary degree compared with 37,530 the year before, according to official data.
What should we expect from Hunt's speech?
Jeremy Hunt will defend the government’s vision for Britain’s economic future in his speech, as he lays out plans for investment and growth.
The chancellor will say he wants to promote policies that allow the private sector to retool the UK’s industrial base and reskill the workforce to generate strong growth over the next decade.
A low-tax base will be an essential element of the UK’s attraction for foreign and domestic businesses, he will say.
He is also expected to condemn British “declinism”, which he will claim is being “peddled” by the Labour party, according to the Daily Mail. Hunt will insist negative forecasts from experts “do not reflect the whole picture”, it reports.
The chancellor will also make “the case for optimism”, blaming EU red tape for stifling British investment. The UK formally left the EU three years ago.
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Chancellor to set out economic plans in speech
Good morning.
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is due to set out the government’s vision for the future of the UK economy this morning in a speech to City executives in London.
Hunt is expected deliver an upbeat message, saying: “Declinism about Britain was wrong in the past and it is wrong today.”
But despite the optimistic tone, the chancellor is also expected to continue to resist calls from some Tory MPs for tax cuts to kickstart flagging economic growth.
Instead he will say the UK should exploit the opportunities provided by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU to raise productivity while using the proceeds of growth to support public services.
His address comes after a cabinet awayday at Chequers on Thursday, where the chancellor said ministers must maintain their “disciplined approach” if they were to get inflation under control.
The speech is due to start at 9.20am GMT and you can watch and follow it here.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, and the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, are due to meet frontline health workers as the row over NHS jobs and pay continues.
We’ll bring you updates from that, and any other political developments, throughout the day.
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