The Chancellor said the Budget on 28 October would “meet our fiscal rules” and give families "stability" to plan for the future.

Chancellor John Healey said his first budget would be built around fiscal discipline Chancellor John Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham have written a joint letter to cabinet ministers telling them they must stick within their existing spending limits while funding new pledges. After taking office, Burnham announced a host of new cost-of-living policies, including scrapping of VAT from domestic electricity bills, reduced business rates for pubs, and capping bus fares in England. Burnham and Healey are determined to stick within the fiscal rules set out by their predecessors Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, treasury sources have told the BBC. Healey's first Budget will be on 28 October and will be "built on fiscal discipline", the chancellor said. Healey said the budget would "meet our fiscal rules" and "give businesses and families some of the stability they need to plan for the future". A report in the Times says the joint letter told ministers they must "within the budgets they have already got" even while "pay[ing] for new things they want to do this year and next". While the ongoing war in Iran is pushing up inflation and borrowing costs, senior Treasury sources confirmed the government is determined to stay "well within the fiscal rules" inherited from Sir Keir Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves.