Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will deliver his highly-anticipated autumn budget in the House of Commons on Thursday
(Picture: PA Wire)The Chancellor is facing a fight with prominent Tory MPs over his plans to hike taxes.
Jeremy Hunt is due to announce a raft of tax rises, public spending cuts and the scaling back of energy bill support on Thursday as he seeks to plug a £55billion blackhole in Government finances.
But some backbenchers have already threatened to rebel over the proposals.
A group, led by MP Jonathan Gullis and including former Home Secretary Priti Patel and 1922 Committee chair Graham Brady, has written to the Chancellor asking him not to hike fuel duty in the Autumn Statement.
Mr Gullis wrote: “My fellow MPs and I, want to see fuel duty cut to stimulate growth, but at least frozen at the current level for the lifetime of this Parliament.”
He added that the Government had benefited from high pump prices, with an estimated £3billion in VAT receipts in 2022.
Ahead of the budget onThursday morning Ms Patel said: “I’ve joined my colleagues in calling on the Chancellor to back families, businesses, jobs and growth by keeping fuel duty down.”
The Treasury cut fuel duty by 5p per litre in March and average pump prices have fallen slightly from the record highs of 192p per litre for petrol and 199p for diesel seen in July.
However the RAC said the average cost of a litre of petrol rose by 4p in October, while diesel was up 10p.
Among the other Tory critics is Esther McVey who warned she will not support tax rises without the scrapping of the “unnecessary vanity project” of HS2.
“Given that we have the highest burden of taxation in living memory, it is clear that the Government’s financial difficulties are caused by overspending and not due to under-taxing,” she said.
Former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg told ITV’s Robert Peston he would vote for the budget so as to not bring the Government down, but warned he opposed tax cuts which he believes “risks making a recession worse”.
Simon Clarke, who was in Ms Truss’s Cabinet during her disastrous mini-Budget, warned Mr Hunt not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater and overcorrect” by imposing too many tax hikes.
