Spring Budget date set for March 15

Jeremy Hunt will set out a Spring Budget on March 15 2023, the Treasury has said.

The Chancellor on Monday commissioned an Office for Budget Responsibility forecast, which will be presented alongside the budget.

Mr Hunt told MPs he will deliver a Budget on March 15 next year.

In a written statement he said: “Today I can inform the House that I have asked the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to prepare a forecast for March 15 2023 to accompany a Spring Budget.

“This forecast, in addition to the forecast that took place in November 2022, will fulfil the obligation for the OBR to produce at least two forecasts in a financial year, as is required by legislation.”

Mr Hunt delivered his first budget as Chancellor last month, as the Government sought to restore the UK’s economic credibility following Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget.

The Chancellor’s last budget saw Mr Hunt set out a series of “difficult” decisions designed to ensure a “shallower” recession for the UK, amid a backdrop of the war in Ukraine, soaring energy bills and the economic turmoil that spelled the end of Liz Truss’s short-lived administration.

In November, the OBR forecast that unemployment would rise by 505,000 from 3.5%, to peak at 4.9% in the third quarter of 2024.

Inflation was expected to be 9.1% over the course of this year and 7.4% next year, contributing to a dramatic fall in living standards.

With plans for almost £25 billion in tax increases and more than £30 billion in spending cuts by 2027-28, the OBR said then that the tax burden – the ratio of taxes as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of the size of the economy – would peak at 37.5% in 2025-25 “which would be its highest level since the end of the Second World War”.

Rishi Sunak and his Chancellor faced a backlash from some Tory MPs over the tax-rising budget even as economists questioned the credibility of the planned spending cuts, many of which have been pushed back past the next general election.

Defence spending is likely to figure in some of the decision-making and debate ahead of the spring statement, as the Government updates the integrated review of defence and foreign policy.

At the last budget, Mr Hunt had said he would maintain the defence budget at at least 2% of GDP.