Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I think the hon. Gentleman’s point is that the price of fuel is linked to international events, which, as I said earlier, I very much agree with. That is why it is important that we de-escalate the situation in the strait of Hormuz, which is the best way to bring down the cost of fuel. Meanwhile, the Government are determined to give families across the country breathing space—extending the 5p cut until the end of the year, a £2 cap on bus fares, and removing VAT from electricity bills—as we weather the impact of international events.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to improve public sector productivity.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Emma Reynolds)]

Public sector productivity is improving, with the NHS delivering 3.5% productivity growth in 2025-26, beating its 2% target. The Government will continue to drive public sector efficiency so that taxpayers’ money delivers the best possible public services. In addition, we are investing in AI adoption across the public sector to help realise the overall target of £14 billion of efficiencies by 2028-29, as agreed at the last spending review.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

May I welcome the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to her new role? If she has any questions, may I recommend an excellent book by a former Chancellor, which has a number of tips? [Laughter.] The public sector is 20% of our national output, so it offers a major opportunity for the Government to improve our national productivity. Was it wise to give the ASLEF train drivers on the Avanti West Coast route an above-inflation pay rise without any apparent productivity quid pro quo? With the public finances so tight, should the rule not be that above-inflation increases must have productivity gains sitting alongside them?

[Emma Reynolds]

We in the Treasury Front-Bench team are wondering when the third book in the trilogy will come along and what it might be called. We have a guess for the title of the next book. I thank him for his advice in his books and in his recent Financial Times article. On train drivers and their pay, I am proud to be part of a Government who have avoided strikes that impact on public spending.

UK Financial Services

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I speak today as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for financial markets and services. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I accept speaking engagements from financial services companies.

I thank the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) not just for securing this debate, but for an excellent opening speech. He has a background in the City—in the stock exchange and working for the City of London corporation—which is probably unusual in his party. I thank him for deploying his expertise, because it is incredibly important for UK financial services that the world sees that there are experts in financial services on both sides of the House. I particularly welcome his comments today.

I welcome the Economic Secretary to the Treasury back to her role, which she carried out previously with great distinction. She has always engaged extremely constructively when it comes to the interests of the City and financial services. I know that her return to that post was widely welcomed. It is also a pleasure to speak alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—an old friend—who himself has a background in the London stock exchange.

After the financial crisis in 2008, financial services had a pretty bad name. The Government had to put up around £1 trillion to support the sector. Chief executives of banks made very ill-judged decisions to continue paying themselves large bonuses at a time when the rest of the country was suffering, and the country suffered a longer and deeper recession at that time as a result of our exposure to the financial services sector, which was much greater than that of our peers. We learned many painful lessons in that period.

As well as the financial crisis, the sector had to deal with the loss of passporting rights post-Brexit. Despite those body blows, the sector employs 2.5 million people—more than at the time of Brexit—and two thirds of the jobs are outside London. It is worth around 11% of our national output. It generates more than £110 billion in tax revenues, which is more than any other single sector. Put another way, it funds more than half the cost of running the NHS.

Whatever one’s interest in financial services, from a fiscal perspective alone they simply cannot be ignored. The sector is also thriving today in very challenging circumstances. The City think-tank Z/Yen tracks the competitiveness of global financial service hubs. In 2020, London trailed New York. Now it has caught back up. It remains the world’s premier centre for foreign exchange and specialist insurance. It helps to make the UK the world’s second largest services exporter.

When I was Chancellor, I introduced the Edinburgh and Mansion House reforms to support this important sector. Regulations, including listing rules, were simplified and the mighty task of making our pension fund industry fit for purpose was started. To their credit, this Government have built on those reforms with the Leeds reforms, the Pension Schemes Act 2026 and the forthcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill, all of which are extremely welcome. But, as the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said, our competitors are not standing still.

With smart policies, our financial services sector could do even more for growth in the UK. Easy access to finance, alongside having the most respected universities in the world outside the United States, has helped to create, for example, the world’s third-largest tech ecosystem. In artificial intelligence, the UK has the potential to be the world’s next silicon valley. If we get there, easy access to finance will have played a major role in making that possible.

What needs to happen next? The first thing is to do no harm—in particular, to do no harm with additional taxes in October’s Budget that could potentially damage the sector. Uniquely, the UK already charges higher corporation tax to banks. Total bank taxes are about 45% here, compared with 32% in Dublin and 28% in New York. I totally understand the temptation—finances are extremely tight, and the banks have few friends—but international capital is mobile, and hiking taxes further will mean that the sector ultimately generates less tax revenue, not more, for the Chancellor.

Secondly, we need to make regulation in UK financial services more proportionate. Consumer protection really matters, but we cannot eliminate all risk, which is what our regulators sometimes appear to be trying to do. Compliance now costs the sector more than £39 billion a year—about 13% of operating costs. We should aim to at least halve that using the new international competitiveness and growth objectives, which the Financial Conduct Authority should apply to authorisation, supervision and enforcement decisions.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I too worked in the financial markets, although I think I have done a better job of hiding it in my 21 years in Parliament. I was more on the debt market side. In fact, I am so old that I was part of the salvage operation for Barings bank when it went under. That brings me to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regulation. The management of Barings did not have a clue what its traders were doing, and the regulators certainly did not have a clue what Barings was doing. I strike a note of caution. I worked for an American investment bank, so I saw the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the UK regime. Where do we strike the balance between ensuring that there is not another collapse of a bank and light-touch regulation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her role in helping to salvage Barings. I did not know that before. She is absolutely right to raise that issue. I do not say this in a party political way, because my party pretty much supported it at the time, but there is no doubt that, in the run-up to the financial crisis, regulation was not as tight as it needed to be. That is one of the reasons why we needed such expensive rescue missions for the banks. Since then, regulation has made the UK financial services sector much more secure.

The Prudential Regulation Authority and the sector as a whole are very resilient. In one of my most difficult moments as Chancellor, one of the most reassuring things that happened was that the Governor of the Bank of England said to me, “This sector is solid. You don’t have to worry. We are in a much, much better state than we were in 2008.” But I do think that it has gone slightly too far in the other direction. Sometimes we can over-correct. Particularly when it comes to consumer risk, there is a danger that we restrict consumer choice by being over-restrictive about the products that banks and financial services companies can offer. That is not to say that we want a free-for-all but, in terms of competitiveness, we need to keep a weather eye on the relative burdens of our regulatory regime, compared with those in other places.

I echo what the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said about AI, tokenisation and digital identity. The UK legal system is widely respected, and this is an area where good regulation could attract a lot of investment. We really could be leaders in it. London should be the world’s most trusted centre for tokenised wholesale finance, with clear rules for tokenised securities, custody settlement, digital money and market infrastructure.

We also need to speed up the consolidation of the pension industry, not least, as the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said, to encourage more investment in UK infrastructure, equities and tech start-ups. If that was done in a sensible, controlled way and as part of a balanced investment strategy, the returns for pensioners would be much higher than they currently are. That would start to stem the tide of British unicorns, of which we have more than Tokyo, Paris and Berlin put together, but which invariably at the moment tend to go to New York when they want to IPO, rather than doing it in the UK.

The fifth thing we could do is to encourage more saving. If we are going to transform the way this country grows, we need an investment-led growth strategy, not just a consumption-led growth strategy. Although it is painful for me to say this, scrapping our crazy system of giving people a new pension pot for every job, and instead copying the Aussies’ pension system—giving everyone one pension pot that follows them around for their whole lives, but with the freedom to change provider whenever they want—would make saving much simpler. It would mean people could go into an app on their phone and immediately see the value of their pension pot. It would encourage them to top up their pension pots if they were able, perhaps because of an inheritance or whatever. The impact of doing that in Australia has been that they save more, they get better returns, and there is much fiercer competition to attract those savings in the domestic pension fund industry.

I know that everyone here today will agree with this, but I think it needs to be said: it is imperative, whatever the pressures, to keep Britain open to the world. Our advantage has always been our openness. We are at our strongest when we connect global capital, trusted law, deep markets and world-class professional services all together. That means the painful, often boring, but absolutely vital work of negotiating trade deals, securing digital market access, agreeing mutual recognition deals, and making sure we have proper mobility for talent.

I am really grateful to the Minister for coming today, and would ask her to briefly address the following questions. When he is considering measures for the Budget, will the Chancellor of the Exchequer keep the competitiveness of the City and financial services central to his considerations? Will the Government undertake a review of the UK’s international tax competitiveness, particularly when it comes to financial services? Will she set out some specific steps that the FCA and PRA can take to deliver their competitiveness and growth objectives? What further reforms will the Government bring forward to help London to become the world’s leading centre for tokenised finance?

What progress has been made in further unlocking pension fund investment into productive UK assets? What further action will the Government take to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and scale-ups, which has been a particular issue in the period since the financial crisis? Finally, does the Minister agree that maintaining the UK’s position as a leading global financial centre should be treated as a core element of the UK’s growth strategy? The prize, if it is, is absolutely enormous. TheCityUK says that we could add £53 billion to our additional annual output by 2035. That is the entire output of the life sciences sector, and would generate about £22 billion of extra tax revenues—around the entire budget for the police or the Department for Transport. The opportunity is huge. The question is whether we have the political will to get there by going further and faster.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

When we froze fuel duty and extended that freeze, that also impacted red diesel. As we keep under review what happens to fuel duty, we will do the same for red diesel. I think there are two crucial issues. The first is protecting supply, which is why de-escalating this conflict—not ramping it up, as the Tories and Reform would do—is so important, so that we can reopen the strait of Hormuz. The second is prices and costs. That is why we have introduced the British industrial competitiveness scheme to help businesses with energy costs and the supercharger. BICS comes in from this year, and the supercharger is extended from this year, to help businesses impacted by this conflict.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

Given that national debt is around 95% of GDP and debt interest costs are nearly 4% of GDP, does the Chancellor agree that it would be irresponsible to fund any cost of living support by increasing borrowing? That would further drive up borrowing costs, choke off growth and saddle future generations with totally unfair debt.

[Rachel Reeves]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on running his fourth London marathon this week for a cancer charity. I know that cause is dear to his heart. He makes an important point. I understand why people are calling for immediate support, but the previous Government’s untargeted support—I understand why the former Chancellor did what he did—cost more than £100 billion in total, I think, and it meant that interest rates, inflation and taxes have ended up being higher than they needed to be. We managed to reduce Government borrowing by £20 billion last year. The budget deficit is below 5% for the first time since 2019. Sticking to fiscal responsibility is not just good for the public purse; it is also good for ordinary families and businesses. I am determined that we do not go back to the high inflation, high interest rates and high taxes that would be the inevitable result if we had an untargeted response to this conflict.

Middle East: Economic Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is right, but I would say it is worse than that in Scotland, where there is the legacy of two awful Governments: the Conservatives made people poorer, while the SNP Government fail to back our nuclear sector, which could deliver cheaper bills for people in Scotland.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

Could I gently ask the Chancellor to be less partisan at a time of crisis? If she brings before the House difficult measures that are right for the country, she will have the support of the whole House, but if she is partisan, she will not. I actually rise to support her basic instinct, which is for targeted rather than universal support. Four years ago, energy bills were heading to £4,000. We are at nothing like that now, and we do not know what the oil price will be next week, let alone this winter. Although we gave support to households and families last time by increasing borrowing, with her support, we cannot react to every single economic shock by further increasing our national debt. Will she confirm that when she comes to the House to announce targeted support, it will be fully funded in her Budget and not funded by increasing our national debt yet again?

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. When he became Chancellor, it was on the back of lots of promises that there would be no support for energy bills. He and others recognised that that position was not sustainable, but work had not been done on how to introduce a targeted system, so the choice was a binary one between blanket support or no support. The right hon. Gentleman took the right approach then by ensuring that people’s energy bills did not go through the roof; however, a targeted approach would be more appropriate, because under the previous approach, the top third of families got more than a third of the benefit. That is not right or sensible—all it does is drive up inflation, interest rates and taxes in the future. It is not the fault of the former Chancellor that that approach was taken, but we are using this period, when energy prices are actually falling because of the approach I took in the Budget, to ensure that we are in a position to take a targeted approach in the autumn.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The price gouging that we see is totally unacceptable, which is why we have already asked the Competition and Markets Authority to look at this. Whether we are talking about petrol at the pumps or heating oil, there is no excuse for any business to use this as an opportunity to rip off customers.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

One of the things that makes our economy less resilient is high levels of debt. The Chancellor and I have both followed fiscal rules that allowed us to claim that debt was falling, when in fact it continued to rise, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP. Does she think it is time to consider a new fiscal rule that actually reduces debt—for example, a rule that public spending will not increase faster than economic growth?

[Rachel Reeves]

Debt is lower in every year of the forecast that I published last week than it was in the plans that I set out in the Budget just back in November. The fiscal rules that I introduced in the October after I became Chancellor said, first of all, that we had to balance day-to-day spending with tax receipts, and that is important. They also stated that, subject to getting debt down as a share of GDP, we could invest in the things that can actually grow the economy. The right hon. Gentleman and I both know that growth is the best way to ensure that our public finances are sustainable, and that we improve living standards for working people.

Middle East: Economic Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. We have already signed off commitments to both Sizewell C—a publicly funded nuclear power station—and small modular reactors, which we will build with Rolls-Royce in north Wales. The purpose of the Fingleton review is to ensure that we can build those quickly and cheaply, as—more than ever—the current situation demands.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

When I was doing the Chancellor’s job, the Treasury rule of thumb was that a 20% increase in energy prices meant 1% more on inflation and 0.5% less on growth. The truth is that it is much too early to know whether the Chancellor will have to find £78 billion to help households with energy bills, as I had to do in 2022, but we do know that the world is much more dangerous and that there are big problems in our defence budget. I welcome the fact that the Government are now committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but nearly two years on from when the previous Government made the same commitment, it is clear that that is not enough. Will she unblock the arguments between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence and outline a timetable whereby defence spending increases to 3% of GDP and we are able to defend our interests in the middle east and our allies in Europe, as the whole House would wish?

[Rachel Reeves]

The right hon. Gentleman’s point about it being too early to tell the impact is really important. Of course we will take the necessary actions to protect consumers and businesses, but the most important thing we can do at the moment is to de-escalate the conflict and work with Lloyd’s of London and countries around the world to get those vessels flowing through the strait of Hormuz. That is absolutely key for containing the rises in energy prices.

On defence spending, the Conservative manifesto committed to getting to 2.5% by the end of the Parliament. We are going to get to 2.6% by April next year, and we have made further commitments to 3% and then 3.5%. Obviously, we have a spending review coming up next year where these decisions will be taken in the round.

Spring Forecast

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

The Bank of England forecast that the actions that I took in the Budget last year would reduce inflation by around 0.4 percentage points, and that inflation will be back close to target from April. That reflects not just taking £150 off energy bills, but freezing prescription charges and rail fares. The events unfolding in Iran and the middle east have resulted, over the last couple of days, in gas prices going up by more than 60% and oil prices by more than 10%. That shows why our plan to take money off energy bills and ensure that our public finances are in a stronger place mean that we are in a better place than we would have been 18 months ago, after the mess left by the Conservatives.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

Given what the Chancellor has just said about gas prices going up by nearly 50% in the past week, her Budget promise to reduce household energy bills by £150 will ring hollow for many people. If the cost of living is the real concern, is the biggest mistake not to increase taxes by £66 billion, which is the equivalent of nearly £2,300 per household? If that money is needed for public services, nearly all of that—£54 billion, in fact—could be got by reducing the welfare bill to 2019 levels. Is it sustainable to keep raising taxes on people in work in order to pay ever more benefits to people not in work?

[Rachel Reeves]

I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but he left a massive black hole in the public finances. There had not been a spending review for years, and during that time inflation went through the roof because the Conservatives lost control of the public finances. We had to find the money to properly fund our national health service. It is a bit rich for the Conservative party to say that we should bring welfare spending down when it presided over a huge increase in welfare spending.

On the burden of taxation, our choices ensured that those with the broadest shoulders pay higher taxes. We got rid of the non-dom tax status and we are introducing the higher value council tax, VAT on private school fees and the energy profits levy. We are ensuring that those with the broadest shoulders pay the higher prices, rather than allowing the increases in inflation and interest rates in the last Parliament, which hit working people.

Taxes

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

Indeed, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to stand up for everybody—even our toolmakers.

Let us be frank: we have had to table this motion today, which seeks to do nothing other than reaffirm the commitments that the Labour party has already made, because of the litany of broken promises that I have just shared with the House.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

Does the shadow Chancellor agree that, following the welfare U-turns, public finances today are in a far worse state than they were a year ago when the Government came into office? There is a crucial difference: a year ago, the Conservative Government were taking difficult decisions to bring taxes down in order to grow the economy; because this Labour Government are failing to take those decisions, there is only one way taxes can go, and that is up.

[Sir Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and under his stewardship, things were so much better. As he points out, the Government have resiled from any attempt to control the welfare bill—an unfunded tax commitment of £5 billion. That, plus the U-turn on the winter fuel payment, is more than £6 billion of unfunded commitments that the Government are responsible for—unfunded commitments that they said they would never see themselves making. He is absolutely right: the legacy that he left when he was Chancellor in the previous Government was the highest growth in the G7 for our economy. We had near record levels of employment, and near record low levels of unemployment. We had had 13 consecutive months of real wage growth, and inflation had been brought down from over 11% due to the Ukraine war, to bang on 2% on the day of the general election. Where is inflation now? It is almost double what the Government inherited.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

As this is his farewell question time, let us now come to the shadow Chancellor.

[Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

This are indeed our final exchanges in the House, so before tomorrow’s fireworks I wish the Chancellor well for the future in her role. There has been a lot of common ground between us. For example, before the election she said that raising employers’ national insurance was a jobs tax that would take money out of people’s pockets. I very much agree with her on that; does she agree with herself?

[Rachel Reeves]

The right hon. Gentleman knows better than almost anyone else that there a was £22 billion black hole in the public finances. That will require difficult decisions, but even in those circumstances we will do everything in our power to protect the incomes of ordinary working people, so we are committed to ensuring that no working people will see higher taxes in their payslips after the Budget.

[Jeremy Hunt]

We all know why the Chancellor is inventing this fictitious black hole. Thirty times this year, before the election, she promised not to raise tax, and now she is planning to present the biggest tax-raising Budget in history. More consensually, however, as this is our final exchange, I welcome her announcement last week of a £2.3 billion loan for Ukraine. Does she agree that the strongest signal of resolve that we can send to Putin is a commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and does she understand why so many people are worried by the fact that she has yet to do so?

[Rachel Reeves]

I have always respected the right hon. Gentleman, but I think it is important for us not to deny the seriousness of the situation that we face with the black hole in the public finances. Combined with the lashing out at independent economic institutions, it suggests that he has more in common with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng than perhaps we thought. I watched my party lurch towards an ideological extreme and deny reality, and we spent years in opposition as a result. The shadow Chancellor risks taking his party down the same path.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

When the Chancellor was sitting on the Opposition Benches she repeatedly attacked cronyism, so will she tell the House whether she told the Treasury permanent secretary that Ian Corfield had made a donation to her before she got him appointed as a director in the Treasury—yes or no?

[Rachel Reeves]

All Governments appoint people to the civil service. The donation from Ian Corfield was declared over a year ago in the proper way, and we answered all the questions in the right way that the civil service asked when we made that appointment. Ian Corfield is supporting this Government in hosting the international investment summit, which will bring hundreds of global investors to the UK next month.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I think that means the answer is no. The ministerial code states:

“Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise”.

That did not happen. Will the right hon. Lady tell the House why cronyism is wrong under the Conservatives but acceptable under Labour?

[Rachel Reeves]

The right hon. Gentleman has a bit of a brass neck criticising this Government, after the appointments and the partying at Downing Street that we saw under the last Conservative Government, and the billions of pounds’ worth of contracts handed out to friends and donors of the Conservative party. That is why this Government are appointing a covid corruption commissioner to get that money back for taxpayers; because unlike the last Government, we are determined that taxpayers’ money is treated with respect, and not handed out to donors of the party.