Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has admitted that UK enterprise taxes are too excessive however insisted one of the simplest ways to decrease them could be to increase the financial system.

Hunt defended the choice to extend company tax to 25 per cent within the final Finances, arguing that decreasing the burden beforehand had not yielded the hoped-for enhance in enterprise funding.

“The tax burden is simply too excessive, we wish to convey it down,” he mentioned on the authorities’s Enterprise Join discussion board in London. “The best way we’ll convey the tax burden down is although development.”

He additionally pushed again on calls to introduce purchasing that was free from worth added tax within the UK after bosses together with Burberry chair Gerry Murphy used the occasion to name on the federal government to match the tax regimes of different European nations to spice up vacationer spending.

The chancellor mentioned the federal government “wouldn’t wait” for the CBI, the employers’ organisation, to work by its issues as ministers sought to make use of the occasion to rebuild relations with bosses.

The federal government has minimize its involvement with the CBI since a scandal hit over alleged rape and different sexual misconduct fees, which has led to an exodus of its members.

Hunt mentioned there was no level in participating with the CBI since its members had “abandoned them in droves”. However he added that he hoped there could be an impartial enterprise group to signify wider trade in future, with out specifying if this ought to be the CBI.

He additionally mentioned enterprise optimism was returning, saying that the federal government was “successful the argument” about its capacity to create the fitting situations to speculate.

After a “bumpy interval” final 12 months, chief executives had instructed him that stability had returned, he mentioned.

The chancellor mentioned the occasion had attracted about 60 per cent of FTSE 100 bosses.