Chancellor Jeremy Hunt defends new Spring Budget
Following the release of the budget on Wednesday afternoon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt joins us in the studio to explain more about his decisions regarding energy bills, childcare and why he wants over 50s to ‘get back to work’.
As part of the budget announcement on Wednesday, the Chancellor announced 30 hours of free childcare for working parents which will cover children below the age of three.
However, the decision has been criticised as it won't come into effect for another year.
Jeremy said: 'I'll be completely honest with you Phil and Holly and your viewers. It's such a big change we're going to need so many more nurseries. We're cutting the cost of childcare by 60%. We have to start now, expanding capacity.'
He added: 'We're now going to work very closely with the industry and say look this is a really huge change. We're going to get rid of this cliff edge that happens when your child is nine months old so that mums and dads that want to can stay in work.'
Speaking about filling job vacancies in needed industries, Hunt said: 'There's a million vacancies up and down the country at the moment, that's not something a Chancellor can solve over night but what I did yesterday was show people a road map as to how we're going to fill all those vacancies.'
Responding to Phillip's question as to how long it will take, Jeremy replied: 'Well I hope it won't be too long Phil, we're going to break down the barriers.'
The Chancellor also admitted that discussions with unions were 'going well' following fresh strike action and that he has removed the social media app Tik Tok. Cyber security experts have recently expressed concern about the Chinese-owned platform.