£100,000 a yr ‘not an enormous wage’, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt claims

Mar 23, 2024 at 8:23 PM

The chancellor has claimed that incomes £100,000 a yr is “not a huge salary”.

Jeremy Hunt made the comment on social media platform X, in a put up which was aimed toward his constituents in Surrey.

He might be campaigning laborious as he’s altering seats for the subsequent common election after the boundaries have been redrawn as a part of a daily evaluate.

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In the put up on his profile, Mr Hunt stated: “I spoke to a woman from Godalming about eligibility for the federal government’s childcare provide which isn’t accessible if one mother or father is incomes over £100k.

“That is an issue I would really like to sort out after the next election as I am aware that it is not [a] huge salary in our area if you have a mortgage to pay.”

Mr Hunt increased the threshold for childcare benefits in his most up-to-date price range.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the typical wage for somebody in full-time work was £34,963 in April 2023.

Mr Hunt is standing for the Godalming and Ash constituency, having represented the Farnham and Haslemere constituency.

According to Rightmove, the property market web site, the typical worth of a home in Godalming has been £683,463 previously yr.

Paul Follows, a Liberal Democrat councillor who’s standing towards Mr Hunt in Godalming and Ash, stated: “Perhaps this is the case when you are a multi-millionaire who can funnel 100k+ into his own campaign without breaking a sweat – but it’s great deal more than the national or local average and a massive indicator as to why the cost of living crisis impacting residents across the country seems to have missed him totally.”

It was lately introduced by the unbiased physique IPSA that MPs would get a salary rise from £86,584 to £91,346 for the subsequent monetary yr.

As a senior cupboard minister, Mr Hunt takes an additional ministerial wage of round £67,000 – that means his earnings from politics are round £150,000.

He can be independently rich from his earlier enterprise profession, and was beforehand dubbed the richest member of Theresa May’s cupboard in 2017, having earned £14m from the sale of a stake in an schooling enterprise he ran.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow paymaster common, stated: “The chancellor has again revealed how desperately out of touch the Tories are with working people when he claims someone earning £100,000 a year is not a ‘huge salary’.

“The overwhelming majority of working people in this country would dream of earning that, yet they are all made to being made to pay the price of fourteen years of Tory failure.

“It is staggering for the chancellor to complain about mortgage prices when it was the Conservative authorities which crashed the financial system with their kamikaze price range and despatched mortgage prices via the roof.

“Only a Labour government will stand up for working people and tackle the cost of living crisis.”