Sir Jeremy Hunt
MP for Godalming and Ash · Conservative · United Kingdom
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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?”
“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 n…”
“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.”
The complete record
Every one of 7,495 lines we hold for Sir Jeremy Hunt, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 150.
“Let me give the same answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). Core inflation is higher in more than half the EU countries, so it is not just about us.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right to be concerned, as we all are, about families in her constituency who are worried about the impact of rising interest rates on their mortgage repayments. She is wrong to suggest that this Government have not been extremely generous in our cost of living payments, which at £94 billion are more, actually, than her party was calling for. If she wants to talk about the last 13 years, maybe she should reflect on why a Conservative-led Government were elected in 2010: it was to pick up the pieces of the terrible economic mess that her party left behind.”
“Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what we have done for those families. This year, families on means-tested payments will get a payment of £900, pensioner families will get a payment of £300 and families with someone who is disabled will get an extra payment of £150, alongside a lot of other measures.”
“What I would say to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents is that we are taking the difficult decisions to deal with inflation in this country, as other countries are doing. We will do what it takes, because dealing with inflation is the only way in the long run that we can stop more families going through what is happening to the constituents he mentions.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right to talk about the impact on renters because of the high prevalence of buy-to-let landlords and the pass-through effect. That is an area we are looking at in great detail, and I will write to her with some of the things we are looking at and planning to do.”
“It is a very complicated issue. I have said I will write to the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), and I am also happy to write to the hon. Gentleman. If he is saying that we are doing nothing to help people who are struggling or worrying about mortgage repayments, I urge him to read the statement in full.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to that issue, and I simply say that the biggest measure in the spring Budget was the childcare measure that will mean families with young children can get up to £6,500 of help with their childcare costs to help them go back to work. That will help those families and help to tackle inflation.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this issue. I reassure him that banks are required by the FCA to offer a tailored solution to people who get into arrears, specific to their circumstances, to make sure that precisely the kind of thing he worries about does not happen.”
“We know the pain that households up and down the country are going through as a result of the cost of living pressures at the moment, and have announced one of the largest support packages in Europe, worth around £3,300 per household this year and last.”
“I totally respect the hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of his constituents in the way that he has done. I do not believe that capping prices is the right long-term solution, but we are doing a lot, including payments of £900 per household for people on means-tested benefits, £150 for households with someone disabled living in them and £300 for households with pensioners living in them, precisely because we want to help the people that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. I will be meeting the regulators next week to talk further about what needs to be done with respect to supermarkets.”
“I am afraid that I do not buy this Brexit narrative from the SNP. Food price inflation has been around 20% in Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Poland in recent times, so this is not a UK-specific issue. We are all dealing with the consequences of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic, and we are all tackling it with one central focus, which is to bring down inflation as our overriding priority.”
“The issue with that argument is that the UK has actually grown faster than France or Italy since we left the single market, and according to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the UK economy is “on the right track”.”
“No one in Rossendale and Darwen could have a more doughty champion than my right hon. Friend, and I listen to what he says carefully, but I think he will understand that those schemes that involve injecting large amounts of cash into the economy right now would be inflationary. So much as we sympathise with the difficulties and will do everything we can to help people seeing their mortgage costs go up, we will not do anything that would mean we prolonged inflation.”
“First, I would say to the right hon. Member that he is talking about something that is being experienced across the world. In fact, interest rates have risen faster in the United States and Canada than they have here. The answer is that we will look at doing everything we can to help people under pressure, but we will not do things that would prolong the inflationary agony that people are going through. We have to be very careful, because a lot of the schemes that are being proposed would actually make inflation worse, not better.”
“The IMF, the OBR and the Bank of England all predict that we will hit our target to halve inflation, and I give the right hon. Member this guarantee: we will stick to the plan to do so.”
“I have set out our national ambition to be the world’s next silicon valley. We are making good progress; last year we were ranked the world’s third largest technology market after the United States and China.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his support for this really important sector in Rother Valley. We have a number of schemes, including £541 million of funding available in the Faraday battery challenge. We also have the £1 billion automotive transformation fund. As a result of the efforts that he and many others have made, we now get 40% of our electricity from renewable sources—the second highest in Europe—and much more progress is to come.”
“That is a fair point. I thank my hon. Friend for the fact that Newbury is a hotbed of technology businesses, with Roc Technologies, Stryker, Edwards Lifesciences and a range of other businesses that she gives a lot of support to. I will write to her listing all those things and I will make sure that it is available on the website of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.”
“I will happily look into what has happened. We strongly support all rural areas having access to gigabyte broadband, as an important part of our policy. We have made a lot of progress on that. I will look into detail of what is happening in the hon. Gentleman’s area and get back to him.”
“We will not hesitate in our resolve to support the Bank of England as it seeks to strangle inflation in the economy, and the best policy is to stick to our plan to halve inflation. I also want to make sure that we do everything possible to help families paying higher mortgage rates in ways that do not themselves feed inflation, so later this week I will be meeting the principal mortgage lenders to ask what help they can give to people who are struggling to pay more expensive mortgages and what flexibilities might be possible for families in arrears.”
“My hon. Friend always speaks extremely wisely on financial matters, and he is absolutely on the money when he talks about the opportunity that would present itself by unlocking £3 trillion of pension fund assets, many of which would get a better return for pensioners if they were invested more in our high-growth businesses, as well as that being a good outcome for the London stock market. All I will say is: watch this space.”
“At the autumn statement, we announced £94 billion of support to help families going through very difficult times. That is more support than was ever proposed by Labour. The answer to these pressures is not borrowing an extra £28 billion a year, as people like Paul Johnson are saying that more borrowing means higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher mortgage rates.”
“I am proud of our economic record, which has seen our economy grow faster than those of France and Japan since 2010, and at the same rate as Germany. Those mortgage holders in Selby, Uxbridge or Mid Bedfordshire will be paying even more for their mortgages if a Labour Government borrow £100 billion more in the next Parliament, and we will not let that happen.”
“I will be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman to talk to him about that initiative. We are making great progress in our schools—we have risen to fourth in the global league table for reading—but we can always do more.”
“We understand the pressures that families are going through up and down the country, but we have responded with generous support this year and last of more than £3,000 for the average household. Not only that, but since 2010 the number of children in absolute poverty has fallen by 400,000.”
“My right hon. Friend is right to say this is a big opportunity. We are home to a third of Europe’s AI start-ups, but we are very aware of the risks of AI. The Government are hosting a global AI summit, with the support of President Biden, this autumn, to ensure we get that regulation absolutely right.”
“I am looking forward to answering questions about that tomorrow afternoon at the covid inquiry. We did what was recommended following Exercise Cygnus. Certainly, Ministers did what they were advised to do, but the operation was focused on pandemic flu. The question that we must ask ourselves is why we did not have a broader focus on the different types of pandemic that could have happened, such as covid.”
“Like all Conservatives, I believe in reducing the burden of taxation wherever possible, while always demonstrating a responsible approach to public finances.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for the inimitable way in which he asked his question. I hope that he was reassured to some extent by the £9 billion cut in the planned level of corporation tax in the Budget, and, if we make the arrangement for capital allowances permanent, as I should like to, that will give us the best investment incentives anywhere in the OECD.”
“Let me gently say to the hon. Member that the freeze in alcohol duty which we introduced in the autumn of 2021, and which will continue until August this year, has constituted a £2.7 billion tax cut over four years. We do everything we can to help the vital Scottish whisky industry.”
“I am delighted that my hon. Friend welcomed the freezing of fuel duty, which means that over the period for which it has been frozen, the average motorist will have saved £200. There is a specific reason why I wanted to continue to freeze it this year: combined with the extension of the energy price guarantee, it will reduce CPI inflation by 0.7% in a year in which headline inflation is still over 10%.”
“Let me remind the hon. Gentleman what we have done for people on low incomes. Because of the increase in the income tax and national insurance thresholds which was completed last year, those on the average wage of £28,000 pay £1,000 less in tax and national insurance than they would have paid at 2010 levels—that is a tax cut that his party opposed at each and every stage.”
“The Government have provided unprecedented support to help households and businesses with energy costs, totalling £94 billion for households and £8 billion for businesses. That is more than £100 billion over 2022 and 2023.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue, which I know is shared by many Members across the House. That is why on 9 January I wrote to Ofgem asking it to update me on its investigation into the business market, which is not a regulated market like the consumer market. It has replied saying that it has concerns. It is concerned about significant changes in standing charges, about an increasing number of suppliers asking for security deposits and raising the cost of those deposits, and about potential breaches of the rules of the energy bill relief scheme. It will get back to me with its solutions as soon as possible.”
“I ask my hon. Friend to keep me updated on what is happening with the hospitality sector in his constituency, but he will know that we have already introduced support for business rates, with a 75% reduction in business rates up to a cap of £110,000, and that the energy bills discount scheme is providing more than £8 billion of support over this year and last. We are doing everything we can.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), who does so on every single occasion she can. Nuclear is important because there will be times when the weather does not generate the energy we need from renewable sources. That is why we announced in the Budget that we are going ahead with Great British Nuclear and with the competition for small modular reactors, provided that an investigation this year finds that that is viable, and we will class nuclear power as environmentally sustainable, subject to consultation.”
“I recognise the challenges that the distilling industry and many other industries are facing. That is why we are giving more than £100 billion of support to businesses and consumers, but I would say to the hon. Lady that Scotch whisky has received nine cuts or freezes in the last 10 Budgets, so we are doing everything we can.”
“That is exactly why I wrote to Ofgem. Wholesale gas prices are now lower than they were before the Ukraine invasion. The hon. Lady is right to say it is not a regulated market and I want to find out from Ofgem what it thinks should happen to avoid precisely the problem she talks about.”
“We are doing a great deal. As the hon. Lady will know, we set up a new scheme, the energy bills discount scheme, to help businesses in the coming year. As I mentioned to my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), we are also giving them 75% relief on their business rates. We will continue to do everything we can for this very important sector.”
“In addition to extending the energy price guarantee, and to help people further, cost of living payments for vulnerable households will kick in next year. We are also uprating benefits and increasing the national living wage to £10.42 an hour.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for saying that. We think the average driver has saved about £200 in total since the 5p cut was introduced, but we are also introducing draught relief for beer drinkers in pubs and 30 hours of free childcare for young parents who are struggling with childcare costs. There are a lot of cost of living measures in the Budget.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning carers, who do an amazing job. It is fair to say that our NHS and care systems would fall over without the incredible job carers do. We will always keep under review what we can do to help these very important people.”
“If we had the same economic inactivity rate as Holland, there would be 2.7 million more people in work, filling every vacancy in the economy nearly three times over. That is why we focused on the issue in the Budget.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for asking that question, and for all the work she has done in the Department for Work and Pensions on economic inactivity. As she knows, there is an ongoing statutory Government review of the state pension age, and that review will need to carefully balance important factors, including fiscal sustainability, the economic context, the latest life expectancy data, and fairness to both pensioners and taxpayers.”
“I do, but I also point out to the hon. Lady that we took a range of other measures in the Budget that will help such people, including increasing the help that we give them to find appropriate work, and helping those who have a long-term sickness or disability to get the support they need to get back into work. Doing all those things will make a big difference.”
“This Conservative Government believe in the virtue of work, and that is why last week’s Budget set out to remove barriers for long-term sick and disabled, for jobseekers, for older people with our pension tax reforms, and for parents with the biggest expansion of childcare in memory.”
“We are interested in giving support to all forms of renewable energy, and the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury is very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss those issues further.”
“I thank the shadow Chancellor for her question. The Government recognise that there is some volatility in the market, but we believe the UK financial system is fundamentally strong and UK banks are well capitalised. They now have core capital ratios that are three times higher than before the 2008 global financial crisis, but we continue to monitor the situation carefully.”
“The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that issue. I said in the Budget that I would return with a full solution to those issues in the autumn statement, but ahead of that we will be making announcements on: pension industry reform, because we want to unlock the £5 trillion of assets in the pension industry; reforms to help companies scale up, so that they do not feel they have to move to other countries when they want to list; and, reforms to green finance so that people can access the capital they need. All those things will be a part of a comprehensive solution that we will be announcing shortly.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his campaigning on this issue. He has long been a voice for reforms to childcare. He is absolutely right that this is one of the biggest sets of childcare reforms we have ever seen. That is why we are taking two and a half years to scale it up. We want to make sure that parents who want to take advantage of the new free hours offer can get the supply of childcare they need, and we will listen very carefully to what the Select Committee says.”