Hammond said the new United Kingdom government’s challenge was to quickly reassure the global investment community, British businesses and consumers to make investments start to “flow into the UK economy again”.
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His comments came shortly before the Bank of England – the country’s central bank – decided not to lower the U.K.’s benchmark interest rate for the first time in over seven years. There will be an autumn statement in the normal way and then there will be a budget in the normal way.
“Britain is open for business”, he said.
When pressed on when Britain would trigger the formal divorce procedure, Mr Hammond said: “That’s a decision that we haven’t made yet”.
However, he urged newly-appointed Brexit secretary David Davis to secure as much access to European Union markets as possible.
Under the slogan: “A country that works for everyone, not just for the privileged few”, the Home Secretary set out a vision for the economy that BBC economic editor Kamal Ahmed describes as being a marriage of “Ed Miliband and Margaret Thatcher”.
Hammond was one of Prime Minister Theresa May’s first appointments, and one of his immediate tasks was to take to the airwaves in hopes of offering calming tones of reassurance to the markets and the general public about the economy.
Hammond, who has previously served as foreign, defence and transport minister, has a reputation in Westminster as a safe pair of hands who rarely hits the domestic headlines.
Speaking before a meeting with Bank of England governor Mark Carney, he did hint the new Government may take advantage of cut-price interest rates to borrow more to invest – thereby scrapping George Osborne’s previous rules.
Hammond is likely to play a role in Brexit negotiations, and here he has followed fellow Remain supporter Theresa May’s line to the letter: that the idea will be to leave the European Union single market, but negotiate access to it.
The biggest surprise was the resurrection of Boris Johnson, who was given Mr Hammond’s old role as Foreign Secretary.
May implied criticism of George Osborne’s tenure at the Treasury, notes the Financial Times, for “neglecting productivity problems” and failing to spread prosperity beyond London and Manchester.
Rachel Griffin, financial planning expert at Old Mutual Wealth, believes Hammond could delay introducing Osborne’s long-awaited reforms to tax system governing non-UK domiciles.
Johnson said he was “very excited” to be part of the government. It’s how long it takes us to get to an agreement on what the principal terms of that agreement are.
“There is a massive difference between leaving the European Union and our relations with Europe, which if anything I think are going to be intensified and built up at an intergovernmental level”, he said.
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Hammond told the BBC on Thursday that the Conservative government had “to reduce the deficit further, but looking at how and when and at what pace we do that and how we measure our progress in doing that, is something that we now need to consider in light of the new circumstances that the economy is facing”.
