Hammond hints at tax rises... and end of austerity

THE Chancellor hinted that taxes could rise in order to ease cuts to public spending yesterday – as he attacked Theresa May for hiding him away during the election campaign.

Philip Hammond warned that ‘people are weary of the long slog’ of austerity as he promised to look again at planned reductions in money for councils.

But he accused the Prime Minister of losing her Commons majority by failing to make the case for economic responsibility.

Criticising Mrs May’s election strategy, Mr Hammond joked that he had been kept ‘not quite in a cupboard’ over the course of the campaign.

The Chancellor – barely visible in the runup to the vote on June 8 – said the Tories would have ‘probably done better’ if they had focused on their economic record.

Mr Hammond said that his role in the campaign had not been the ‘one I would have liked it to be’.

He told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘I did a lot of travelling around the country.

‘I met lots of very interesting people, I heard lots of interesting stories. I would have liked to have made much more of our economic record, which I think is an excellent one, creating 2.9million new jobs, getting the deficit down by three-quarters.’

Asked if the PM’s former aides Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill had kept him off the air waves, the Chancellor replied: ‘I’m not going to speculate about what happened inside the campaign leadership team.

‘The end result is, in my judgment, we didn’t talk about the economy as much as we should have done. We didn’t put enough energy into dismantling Jeremy Corbyn’s economic proposals and his spending plans, which would be catastrophic for this country, and we will now do that.’

He said that, in light of the election result, he would look again at planned spending cuts ahead of November’s Budget, adding: ‘Obviously we’re not deaf.’

But Mr Hammond warned that taxpayers could face rises to pay for a loosening of the purse strings. He said: ‘We’ve never said we won’t raise some taxes.

‘Overall we are a government that believes in low taxes and we want to reduce the burden of taxes overall for working families. That is our political objective.

‘But what is dishonest is the approach the Labour Party took in the general election – pretending that you can raise taxes but they will never impact ordinary people.

‘I’m afraid increasing the burden of taxation will have an impact. If it’s tax on companies it will reduce investment and the creation of jobs.’

Later, Mr Hammond told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: ‘I certainly recognise that people are weary after seven years of rebuilding the economy from the horrors that we saw after the financial crash.’

Mrs May had been widely expected to sack Mr Hammond if she secured a large majority, but after the party lost MPs she kept him in post.

In an awkward campaign appearance together last month, the Prime Minister – standing alongside Mr Hammond – had refused to say if he would keep his job. The Chancellor kept a low profile for the rest of the campaign.

Theresa May must scrap the NHS pay freeze because stand- ards of care are becoming unsafe, union bosses warn.

The leaders of 16 medical organisations have written to the PM urging her to end a seven-year cap on pay as they say hospitals and ambulance services are becoming dangerously understaffed.

The letter – signed by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Midwives – was co-ordinated by the Royal College of Nursing, which last month said it would be staging a summer of protests over the pay cap.