Jeremy Hunt delivers blow to florists

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, gave his second speech of the day last night, following his Royal Television Society conference turn, when he delivered an address in honour of the late Tory minister Sir Nicholas Ridley. He told an audience of politicos that the government is right to cut the deficit quickly – and threw in a few examples of waste he has abolished in his own Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Scrapping ministerial cars has saved £250,000, for starters. He took that decision before he left Downing Street on the day David Cameron offered him the job, which meant Hunt had to walk to Buckingham Palace to accept the seals of office from the Queen with a rucksack on his back in which to carry them. Hunt also revealed that when he arrived at the ministry it spent £2,500 a day on consultants (that's £9.1m a year), while: "Under Labour my department spent £140 per person per year on cut flowers and pot plants." That's enough to buy an awful lot of New Labour red roses.