Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Paymaster General, said: “The Chancellor has again revealed how desperately out of touch the Tories are with working people when he claims someone earning £100,000 a year is not a ‘huge salary’.

“The overwhelming majority of working people in this country would dream of earning that, yet they are all being made to pay the price of 14 years of Tory failure.

“It is staggering for the Chancellor to complain about mortgage costs when it was the Conservative government which crashed the economy with their kamikaze budget and sent mortgage costs through the roof.

“Only a Labour government will stand up for working people and tackle the cost of living crisis.”

Surrey county councillor Paul Follows, who is standing as the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate against Mr Hunt in the next election, wrote, external: “Perhaps this is the case when you are a multi-millionaire who can funnel 100k+ into his own campaign without breaking a sweat – but it’s great deal more than the national or local average and a massive indicator as to why the cost of living crisis impacting residents across the country seems to have missed him totally.”