Britain's finance minister Nadhim Zahawi pledged to rebuild and grow the struggling economy and said he would look at all options to do that, including the possibility of tax cuts.
Zahawi moved from the education ministry to the Treasury on Tuesday after Rishi Sunak resigned and faced questions in his first media interviews about whether he would be able to steer the economy out of its looming slowdown, given Prime Minister Boris Johnson's weakened grip on power.
Sajid Javid quit as health minister in protest against Johnson, as well as Sunak.
Britain's economy is showing signs of a slowdown as inflation heads for double-digits and is forecast to be weaker than other big industrialised economies next year.
Britain is struggling to adjust to life after leaving the EU because of the challenge of soaring energy and food costs.
Zahawi, widely credited in the Conservative Party for successfully overseeing Britain's COVID 19 vaccine rollout, said that 2023 was shaping up to be hard and he would focus on the cost-of-living squeeze facing households.
He said there was a rethink of Sunak's plan to increase taxes on businesses next year.
He told BBC radio that nothing is off the table. I will come back on your programme and talk about where I think can do more on taxes. We are determined to do that, as was my predecessor. He was determined to do that on personal taxation and of course on other taxation as well. Zahawi said his priority was to fight inflation - a problem that could be exacerbated by tax cuts now and he also stressed the need to fix public finances after his predecessor spent more than 400 billion pounds $479 billion to cushion the economic blows caused by the coronaviruses.
We have just come out of the equivalent of a world war. He said that the government would have to be careful about increases in public sector pay, which could cause inflation to go up.
He told Sky News that the important thing is to get inflation under control and be fiscally responsible.
Zahawi was appointed after Sunak left the job in protest at Johnson's standards and citing differences over economic policy with the prime minister.
The chaos at the top of British politics was adding to the economy's problems, according to the main opposition Labour Party.
The pound fell yesterday. The pound is weak because of the weak government. Rachel Reeves, Labour's finance minister, said that the pound's weak pound means the costs of energy, petrol and diesel go up and up and up.
She said that the weakness of the government is directly contributing to the increase in petrol prices at the pump.