Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are considering massive spending cuts and tax rises as they confront a gaping financial black hole ahead of the autumn budget, what are we to do?

Apparently, treasury sources declined to put a figure on the savings being considered in the November budget but they were believed to be looking for financial headroom of up to £10 billion.

Well, I don’t want to be too controversial here but I think looking down the back of the sofa is not going to cut the mustard in these circumstances, however there is a way to make a step in the right direction although I’m sure the idea will not be embraced by the more ‘woke’ members of our society.

Here’s a clue as to possible savings we might consider, apparently it costs 5.6 million pounds a day to house the considerable number of migrants coming over from France every day and without wishing to be beastly to them a considerable number of them are not actually fleeing war torn countries, Albania for example which, as far as I know is not at war with anyone.

I may be wrong but I understand we put these people up in hotels, and presumably pay for their food as well as their accommodation which at 5.6 million pounds a day is an eye watering amount of money (over 2 billion a year) and whilst they are obviously not being housed in the Ritz the accommodation is considerably better than a piece of plastic hung from a tree which is pretty much the norm whilst they are waiting in the woods at Calais before boarding an inflatable and heading for the shores of Great Britain.

There are solutions, depending on how desperate you might consider the situation is and the first of which is obviously the more desperate of all, in that most of the boats coming over probably don’t have the petrol to get them all the way which leaves the possibility of leaving them halfway and not sending the lifeboat out to collect them as we do now.

Secondly, we could house them in a tented community more like they seem to do when people are genuinely fleeing from a war torn country with food supplied by the Red Cross or some other charitable organisation.

Lastly and the more humane option which may actually be a workable solution is to continue as we are doing but to tot up the bill at the hotel and present it to each person when checking out as a Government loan rather along the lines of student tuition fees to be paid back when they have secured employment and are earning sufficient funds.

Perhaps, you may consider all of my suggestions to be a little too harsh but as we are currently in a very precarious position financially, desperate times call for desperate measures.