The chancellor has indicated the government will ease austerity, saying the Conservatives were “not deaf” to the message that had been delivered at the ballot box on 8 June.
As he admitted the public was “weary of the long slog” it had endured since the financial crash, Philip Hammond said the government would be looking at the plans it had for cuts to winter fuel allowances and ending the triple lock on pensions.
But he left the door open to raising taxes and said borrowing more was “not the solution”.
“I think people are weary of the long slog,” he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.
Asked if he would go ahead with £3bn of cuts to local government, he replied: “We’ve set out a series of measures that are already legislated for. We have other proposals that we will now have to look at again in the light of the general election result and in the new parliament.
“I will be delivering a budget in the autumn and you will find out then what we are proposing.
“There’s not going to be a summer budget or anything like that.”
Pressed on whether the government would have to change direction, particularly if it did a deal with the DUP, which is opposed to cuts to the winter fuel allowance and the end of the triple lock on pensions, he replied: “We will look at all these things. Obviously we are not deaf. We heard a message last week in the general election and we need to look at how we deal with the challenges we face in the economy.
“I understand that people are weary after years of hard work to rebuild the economy after the great crash of 2008-09, but we have to live within our means.
“More borrowing, which seems to be Jeremy Corbyn’s answer, is not the solution.
“We have never said we won’t raise some taxes. Overall, we are a government that believes in low taxes and we want to reduce the burden of taxes overall for working families.”