This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
George Osborne was ordered to “come clean with the British public” yesterday over which services will suffer in his plans to slash state spending by another £30 billion.
Public-sector union Unison general secretary Dave Prentis challenged the Tory Chancellor after he launched his latest assault on public spending in the Autumn Statement.
Mr Prentis told the Star: “The Chancellor must come clean with the British public and clearly explain where his extra £30bn of spending cuts will come from.”
Mr Osborne had earlier slammed predictions that his plans would plunge Britain back into the poverty of the inter-war years as “hyperbolic” — a day after a Treasury official was forced to admit that the cuts would leave public spending at its lowest level in 80 years.
“You had BBC correspondents saying Britain is returning to a George Orwell world of the Road To Wigan Pier,” he complained to the Beeb’s Today programme yesterday morning.
“It is just such nonsense.
“I thought the BBC would have learnt over the past four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened.”
But the Bullingdon Boy refused to spell out which public services he was prepared to starve of funding to cut down Britain’s £90bn deficit.
And Mr Prentis added: “All we have seen so far is the government dodging questions over a raft of unspecified cuts, which will spell further misery for all of us who rely on public services and the people who deliver them.
“This is just another example of the Chancellor’s contempt for working people in this country.”
The Morning Star also pressed top Tory MP David Davis and leading Lib Dem Jeremy Browne to tell the public what services or benefits they lose after 2015.
Both told a post-Autumn Statement briefing yesterday that Con-Dem cuts had not gone far enough.
Former minister Mr Davis said he was encouraged that the new cuts would be “fiercer than the ones imposed in the last four years.”
Mr Browne told the joint Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Taxpayer’s Alliance event that the cuts been the “bare minimum rather than something excessive.”
But, when quizzed by the Star, neither would make clear what they were prepared to see chopped.
Labour MP Simon Danczuk also dodged the question after shadow chancellor Ed Balls made clear that Labour is “going to have to have spending cuts” if it wins in May.
Ukip MP Mark Reckless did say his party would scrap the entire Environment Department — but could not say whether NHS funding would be safe.
IEA director Mark Littlewood insisted though that nothing should be sacred for a right-wing government.
He said: “If you are seriously looking for spending reductions into the tens of billions — and I think we have to — then to do that without looking at health, education or welfare is damn near impossible.”