Sunak may delay Budget for extra time to prepare

NEW CHANCELLOR and Yorkshire MP Rishi Sunak may delay the date of next month’s Budget in order to give himself more time to prepare, a senior Minister has revealed.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Ministers had still not been told whether the Budget would go ahead on March 11 as planned after Sajid Javid’s resignation.

“I know that the Budget plans are well advanced but I also know that Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor may want time,” Mr Shapps told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme. “I haven’t heard whether the date of March is confirmed as yet. He is probably looking at it, I should think this week.”

Mr Sunak, who represents Richmond in North Yorkshire and was previously the Treasury Chief Secretary, was catapulted into the top job after Mr Javid dramatically resigned in last week’s Cabinet reshuffle. It followed a series of well-publicised clashes between Mr Javid and Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings, who was reportedly pressing for the Treasury to relax constraints on public spending.

Mr Shapps, however, denied that Mr Cummings was now “all powerful” in Whitehall.

Speaking on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Shapps said the Government was determined to deliver a “big uplift” for infrastructure spending, while also reducing debt over the course of the parliamentary term.

He said: “Our manifesto commitments are our commitments. We absolutely intend to stick to the manifesto commitments. For the rest of it, you will need to wait until the Budget.”