Drones and AI part of Hunt's £1.8bn Budget efficiency push

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : Recent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) have given the chancellor less fiscal headroom than previously thought, leading him to consider unexpected tax rises such as abolishing the non-dom tax status.
57% : Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}Jeremy Hunt has announced a "public sector productivity drive" in a bid to improve services without ramping up government spending.
53% : Typically, chancellors leave themselves £25bn of headroom to cope with changes in interest rates and inflation without needing to change tax and spending policies, but the chancellor's room for manoeuvre has been heavily impacted by inflation falling faster than expected, resulting in lower tax revenues, and increased borrowing costs.
52% : The plans are announced just days before Mr Hunt will deliver his spring Budget in which he is widely anticipated to introduce further tax cuts in the hope of boosting electoral prospects.
51% : The plans announced on Sunday show the chancellor is still eyeing up ways to reduce public spending as the treasury suggest that the proposed measures could return the UK to pre-pandemic levels of productivity.
49% : Mr Hunt is facing pressure to prioritise tax cuts over further public spending as Conservative backbenchers warn the chancellor that only tax-cuts can reverse their electoral fortunes.
46% : But hopes of large tax cuts have been dampened as economists have warned against any reductions in public sector spending.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.