Jeremy Hunt could not hide his frustration this morning when journalists pressed him over the expensive decisions he had taken as chancellor.
The new Labour government claimed to have found a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances left behind by the Tories on Monday.
Now the shadow chancellor, Hunt is trying to defend his legacy in the Treasury from the claims made by his successor Rachel Reeves.
ITV’s Good Morning Britain host, Ed Balls, pointed out that the home office under the Tories had signed off on a £6.4bn on asylum costs, according to Labour’s latest audit.
“The truth is the Treasury should have asked you to give them a direction to agree these things, because the money wasn’t there,” Balls said.
“And to come on the programme and start blaming what Labour might do in the future for costs you signed up to in this financial year – it doesn’t cut any ice at all.”
When Hunt tried to deflect by talking about Labour’s decision to give public sector workers a pay rise, Balls pressed on: ”£6.4bn in this year to spend on asylum hotel costs.
“That was a decision you had agreed with the home office this year, which you hadn’t made public to parliament. That’s correct isn’t it?”
Hunt replied: “That is not correct, it would not have cost that money if Conservatives in office,” he said, claiming the Rwanda deportation scheme would have reduced those costs.
The two men then spoke over each other repeatedly over asylum costs.
Balls eventually said that when Hunt came in to clear up the mess triggered by Liz Truss’s mini-budget, he believed the Tory MP “often made the right calls”.
“I don’t think the Treasury, or a chancellor, would normally sign up to the kinds of things it appears you did sign up to for this financial year,” Balls said.
“The only conclusion I drew was that you must have been instructed to do these things, by No.10, by Downing Street, by the prime minister, because otherwise, for you to have signed up to this list of spending commitments in year – blowing your own reserve and not making them public to parliament....
“I mean, it’s unprecedented, Mr Hunt! Surely, someone else asked you to do this.”
Hunt claimed Balls was using “the same mock outrage” as Reeves did, and that – if Balls hadn’t spoken over him – he would have been able to say Rwanda scheme would have reduced costs.
“The thing that always frustrates our audience is when people give specifics answers which don’t answer the question,” Balls replied.
Hunt just maintained that he had answered the question and given him a straight answer “six times”.
The former chancellor was similarly furious when Radio 4′s Today programme asked him if the government spent hundreds of millions of pounds filming content for Tory minsters’ social media channels.
“I’m not aware of the figures,” he said, claiming he was “the opposite of profligate” when he was chancellor.
“Do you think those figures are false?” BBC host Justin Webb asked.
Hunt replied: “I don’t know those figures, and you’re just throwing them at me for the first time!”