Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng insisted the UK government's "position hasn’t changed” on the mini-budget, despite multiple reports of an imminent U-turn on the package of unfunded tax cuts.

Sources have suggested that Liz Truss could even revisit the decision not to put up corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25%. 

Scrapping the planned increase in April was a central pledge of her leadership campaign.

 

Rumours of a climbdown saw both UK government bonds and the pound rallying.

 

 

Mr Kwarteng has already U-turned on a key promise to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax.

Mr Kwarteng, who is at the International Monetary Fund in Washington for a summit of finance ministers, acknowledged that the UK had suffered some “turbulence” following his mini-budget.

However, he said the problems facing the UK were the same problems facing countries around the world.

“What I am going to acknowledge is the fact that it is a very dicey situation globally,” he said in a pooled clip for broadcasters in Washington.

Pressed on the situation in the UK, he said: “There was turbulence.

“Everybody is focused on inflation, everybody is affected by potential interest rate rises, everybody is affected by the energy price spike which has been exacerbated by Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine.

“Everybody across the global financial community is focusing on the same problem.”

Mr Kwarteng said he would stick to his plan to deliver the medium-term fiscal plan - setting out how he's going to pay for the tax cuts and bring down government debt without any spending cuts - on Halloween.

Asked if a corporation tax U-turn was on the cards, he said: “What I’m totally focused on is delivering on the mini-budget.”

Asked if he would have to quit if there were further U-turns on the mini-budget, he said: “I am totally focused on the growth agenda.

“I am totally focused on making sure that people are helped with their energy bills, that the energy price guarantee is understood, that the scale of our intervention… is understood and that we can actually deliver this country a path, get us on a trajectory, to growing the economy so everyone benefits.”

When it was put to him that there were discussions in London about scrapping measures in the mini-budget while he was in Washington, Mr Kwarteng said: “I speak to No 10, I speak to the Prime Minister all the time.

“We are totally focused on delivering the growth plan.

“What we were facing was a tax high of 70 years and no growth.”

He said his talks with the International Monetary Fund had illustrated that “growth is a central focus of the international community” and the Government was “quite right to focus on growth”.

“People are talking about some of the ideas that we have put forward,” Mr Kwarteng said.

Asked if he and the Prime Minister would still be in office in a month, Mr Kwarteng said: “Absolutely 100%. I am not going anywhere.”

Former Tory chancellor, George Osborne questioned why his successor was waiting until Halloween.

"Given the pain being caused to the real economy by the financial turbulence, it’s not clear why it is in anyone’s interests to wait 18 more days before the inevitable u-turn on the mini budget," he tweeted.