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Jeremy Hunt defends pension tax giveaway for rich, saying it will lead to people getting NHS operations more quickly – live

Chancellor faces backlash over pensions tax change as Labour pledge to reverse policy announced in budget

Here are some more lines from Jeremy Hunt’s morning interview round.

Hunt claimed it was “bizarre” to describe the budget as a giveaway for the rich in the light of all the support going to people with the cost of living. Asked about this on Times Radio, he replied:

I think it is a rather bizarre thing to say that when this is a set of measures that mean in two weeks’ time we are going to be spending a total of £94bn billion this year.

A huge amount of money, giving around £3,000 of cost-of-living support to a typical household, including uprating benefits with inflation, one-off payments to people on low incomes of up to £900.

Hunt claimed it was “impossible” to know how many doctors would return to work, or keeping working, as a result of his abolition of the lifetime pensions allowance. He said he did not accept the estimate from the Office for Budget Responsibility that only 15,000 more people would stay in the labour force as a result. (See 9.01am.)

He accused Labour of hypocrisy on the lifetime pensions allowance, saying that last year Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said removing the limit on the allowance for doctors would save lives. Hunt said:

[Streeting] seems to have changed his mind overnight on that one. He said it was crazy and it would save lives to get rid of that cap. Well, he was right in September when he said that.

Hunt defended the decision to rollout the new free childcare policy for children aged one and two over several years, saying such a big reform had to be introduced over time. He told Sky News:

This is the biggest transformation in childcare in my lifetime.

It is a huge change and we are going to need thousands more nurseries, thousands more schools offering provision they don’t currently offer, thousands more childminders.

He rejected the claim that his decision in the budget to include construction workers on the shortage occupation list, which will make it easier for foreign construction workers to get visas to work in the UK, was a betrayal of people who voted for Brexit to reduce immigration. When this was put to him, he replied:

People who voted for Brexit didn’t vote for no immigration. They voted for control on migration …

But what those people who voted for Brexit want is an economy and economic model that does not depend on unlimited and unskilled migration. What those want is to know that the government has a plan to remove the barriers that stop people working in the UK … That was the plan that I announced yesterday.

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