U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has pledged help to the most vulnerable weather Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, even as he announced a raft of spending cuts and tax increases designed to mend the country’s battered finances.

Hunt promised Thursday to spend billions pounds on programs including welfare benefits, government pensions and help for low-income residents struggling to pay their energy bills. He says that while difficult decisions are needed to restore Britain’s economic credibility those who rely on the government should not suffer. Pensioners also were protected.

Britain’s inflation rate accelerated to 41-year high in October, fueling calls for the government to do more to ease the impact of rising food, energy and housing prices. Those demands come as government finances are being squeezed by slowing economic growth and pressure to begin reducing public debt built up over the last 15 years as Britain battled the global financial crisis, coronavirus pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine.