Question Time audience deliver brutal verdict on Jeremy Hunt's Autumn Statement

24 November 2023 , 08:30

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Question Time audience deliver brutal verdict on Jeremy Hunt's Autumn Statement

Just one person in the audience of last night's BBC Question Time raised their hand when asked if they were optimistic about the Autumn Statement.

Presenter Fiona Bruce posed the question in "the interest of balance" after multiple people chimed in to criticise the Chancellor's financial announcement this week. She said: "Does anyone here - how can I put it - feel a bit more optimistic about the coming years following yesterday's statement?" Just one person raised their hand.

One audience member said the Tories were telling "lies" by claiming the Autumn Statement would help people pay their bills. "I work in a public sector job. I earn just above minimum wage, and yet I rely on a Universal Credit top up to be able to pay my bills. The £400 you say I'm going to be getting back from the National Insurance cut is a third of what I rely on from the universal credit payments across the year/ So you're not helping me at all," the council worker said.

"You're just telling lies to make yourself feel better. You're not helping. It's helping you a bit... it's not helping me enough. It's not going to make any difference at all to me being able to pay my bills over a year."

The Question Time audience debated the Chancellor's Autumn Statement announcement

A self-employed woman in the audience said scrapping the Class 2 National Insurance for the self-employed would mean saving £3.45 a week. "It's £180 a year. Me personally, I don't think that's particularly high. I'd much prefer to have gone to the NHS personally. I mean it's it's a waste. It's a waste of legislation. It's £180 per person - it's ridiculous."

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A man from the audience, who works in the NHS, said the £20billion tax cuts was public sector funding "being lost". "I also work in the public sector within the Health Service, and the ability for the health service to make use of that funds has just been stripped away and I think it's inappropriate and untimely," he said. Another woman said: "How is raising the minimum wage, which actually the government doesn't pay [but] business has to pay, help businesses?"

The one man who put his hand up to say he was optimistic about the Autumn Statement said: "The way I look at things is that over the past 5-10 years, the country has had some massive economic storm." The audience member, who said he runs a manufacturing company in Hertfordshire, said people needed to understand there was a cost to furlough handouts during the pandemic or handouts to help with energy bills.

"The reality is that was all borrowed money, and the reality is that money has to be paid back," he said. "So yeah, it's tough. It's tough for us and it's tough for many, many other people. But I do think that actually you've got to be realistic and recognise that money has a cost and you have to pay it back and that's where I'm coming from."

Science Minister Andrew Griffiths, who was a Treasury Minister until earlier this month, said: "The thing we found out this week from the forecasts is that the UK economy has been more resilient than everybody forecast and that's given the Chancellor, the government, the chance to make some decisions and I think those are long term decisions." But he added: "We're not out of the woods in the economy, which is why we've got to strike a careful balance."

Labour's Shadow Minister for Work Alison McGovern said: "I mean, look the difference between our parties is the record. And we have seen today that this parliament will in fact be the first where incomes are lower at the end of it than they were at the beginning. I think that that is a shocking record."

Sophie Huskisson