The UK faces a "more difficult" era of austerity than the one after the 2008 financial crisis to stabilise the economy, a former governor of the Bank of England warned yesterday.
Lord Mervyn King said the average person could face "significantly higher taxes" to fund public spending.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is scheduled to set out his economic plans on October 31. .
He has already scrapped almost all the tax cuts announced under Liz Truss.
Mr Hunt has said: "This government will take the difficult decisions necessary to ensure there is trust and confidence in our national finances.
"That means decisions of eye-watering difficulty."
Time to 'front up'
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Lord King said that "it is time to front up" with the public about the difficulties the country is facing.
He said: "Public expenditure isn't going down, if anything it will go up therefore taxes will have to rise to fill the gap which is there at present".
"That doesn't make a very happy picture for the next few years."
"But what we need is a government that will actually tell us honestly there is a reduction in our national standard of living because we've decided to help Ukraine and confront Russia and that means that all of us are going to have to share the burden. We can't just put all of it on our children and grandchildren."
After the 2008 financial crisis, when the banking sector came close to collapse, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government announced the sharpest cuts in public spending since the end of World War II.
Asked if the UK could be facing a similar period of austerity, Lord King, who was governor at the time, said: "In some ways it could be more difficult".
Significantly higher taxes
He said: "The challenge is, if we want European levels of welfare payments and public spending, you cannot finance that with American levels of tax rates - so we may need to confront the need to have significantly higher taxes on the average person."
The Telegraph says today that Jeremy Hunt is considering up to £20billion of tax rises in the Halloween budget, with high earners to bear the brunt of his quest to balance the books.
The chancellor has been told by the Office for Budget Responsibility that there is still a £40billion black hole in the nation's finances, even after he axed almost all of the mini-budget.
He is looking to raise as much as half that amount from putting up taxes, reducing the need for painful and highly-controversial cuts to public spending.
Mr Hunt could seek to reform generous capital gains rules and bring them more into line with general taxation, bringing in around £3.5billion a year.
He is also looking at ditching the two-year removal of green levies from energy bills, which is being subsidised by the Treasury, and reintroducing them next April.