Hammond will keep tight grip on public finances despite ‘light at end of the tunnel’

PHILIP Hammond has warned he will not relax his grip on the public finances, despite seeing economic “light at the end of the tunnel” after years of austerity.

Speaking ahead of the Spring Statement tomorrow, the Chancellor said Britain’s debt mountain was still too high.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel because what we are about to see is debt starting to fall after it has been growing for 17 continuous years. That is a very important moment for us but we are still in the tunnel at the moment,” he told BBC1’S The Andrew Marr Show. “We have a debt of £1.8 trillion – 86.5% of our GDP. All the international organisations recognise that is higher than the safe level.

“This isn’t some ideological issue. It is about making sure we have the capacity to make sure we can respond to any future shock to the economy.

“There will be economic cycles in the future. We need to be able to respond to them without taking our debt over 100% of GDP.”

Economists expect Mr Hammond will announce Government borrowing is set to be around £7 billion lower in 2017-18 than had been predicted when he unveils the latest forecasts.