LBC presenter Nick Ferrari pressed Chancellor John Healey over the Budget in a heated exchange, summing up his verdict in six words: "Where's the big bold ideas, Chancellor?"
Ferrari opened the interview by mocking the measures announced in the financial statement, challenging Healey over the Prime Minister's earlier promise to end neoliberalism.
"As recently as June, the Prime Minister said we'd have an end to neoliberalism. This was his and your first budget. As the Conservatives pointed out, there's 4p off the price of gherkins, 2p on a pint possibly, and a return to public-private partnership. This is not groundbreaking, Chancellor," Ferrari said.
Healey defends Budget measures
Healey disputed the criticism, saying: "I dispute that. They can decry the small things that we're doing and if we can do them we should do them. I have taken some of the tariffs of those sort of imports. But I've also frozen fuel duty that helps farmers..."
Ferrari interjected: "That was already frozen, wasn't it? Where's the big bold ideas, Chancellor?"
Hours after delivering his first Budget, Healey had admitted the Government cannot shield people from all the financial pressures they face. Speaking to Sky News following Wednesday's financial statement, he acknowledged the limits of what ministers can do to ease the cost-of-living squeeze on households.
"We can't remove all the rises, we can't remove all the pressures that people are facing," he told Sophy Ridge.
Energy payment and funding
The admission came as the Chancellor defended a £100 energy payment for roughly 20 million households in England, designed to provide some relief as families contend with rising bills.
Healey insisted the Government would act where it could to help people cope with the financial strain, saying: "That's an important payment. Now, you can't remove all the rises, you can't remove all the pressures that people are facing. But my aim is to say, look where we can, we'll act, we'll give people a bit of breathing space and [we're] doing that with this household energy payment."
His comments underlined the challenge facing the Government as it attempts to deliver immediate help while dealing with the economic fallout from the conflict in the Middle East. Healey indicated the Government was asking banks to help fund the energy payment through an additional tax on the sector over the next 15 months.
Energy policy shift
He also insisted the Budget marked a change in direction for energy policy, declaring that the priority would be to bring down costs for consumers.
"What I signalled today, very clearly, [is] that from this point, British energy policy will be about getting cheaper bills," he said.
The Chancellor rejected suggestions that the Budget lacked ambition, despite Prime Minister Andy Burnham's pledge to break with decades of economic orthodoxy. Asked whether the Budget matched Mr Burnham's promise to tear up 40 years of neoliberalism, Mr Healey replied: "I would say that's wrong."
He pointed to immediate measures to help households alongside longer-term plans to reform Britain's energy system and remove levies from household bills.
