The new chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said there “were mistakes” in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget.

Speaking to Sky News on Saturday, Mr Hunt said: “It was a mistake when we were going to be asking for difficult decisions across the board on tax and spending to cut the rate of tax paid by the very wealthiest.”

Hunt warns of ‘difficult decisions’; follow politics latest

He added that it was an error to “fly blind” by not accompanying the ‘fiscal event’ with an economic forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which many argue sent the financial markets into turmoil.

On tax cuts, he said: “We won’t have the speed of tax cuts we were hoping for and some taxes will go up.”

Asked if this would mean a return to austerity, he replied: “I don’t think we’re talking about austerity in the way we had it in 2010. But we’re going to have to take tough decisions on both spending and tax.”

Mr Hunt was appointed chancellor on Friday, an hour after his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked after just 38 in the job.

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While his appointment was welcomed by some Tory MPs as “an experienced pair of hands”, others questioned why Mr Kwarteng was the one who had to go when he was pursuing policies Ms Truss espoused in her leadership campaign.

At a hastily-arranged news conference in Downing Street on Friday, the prime minister dismissed calls for her resignation, saying she was “absolutely determined to see through what I have promised”.

But announcing another U-turn, she said: “It is clear that parts of our mini-budget went further and faster than markets were expecting, so the way we are delivering our mission right now has to change.”

Mr Kwarteng’s plans to drop the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, were therefore being scrapped, she announced, saving the Exchequer £18bn a year.

‘The last few weeks have been very tough’

Asked why he agreed to take on the difficult job of sorting out the public finances, the new chancellor said he wants to “do the right thing by the British people”.

But he added: “I want to be honest with people, we have some very difficult decisions ahead.

“The last few weeks have been very tough, but the context of that is coming out of a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis.

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“No chancellor can control the markets, but what I can do is show that we can pay for our tax and spending plans and that is going to need some very difficult decisions.”

He said that all government departments would have to “find more efficiencies than they were planning to find”, but stood by his predecessor’s commitment of an economic forecast to reassure the markets on 31 October.

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