GEORGE OSBORNE was accused yesterday of repeating lies that Britain’s main problem is government borrowing and spending to excuse vicious attacks on public services, workers and disabled people.

Communist Party general secretary Rob Griffiths highlighted the Chancellor’s plans to cut the funding deficit by an extra £30 billion up to 2018 by slashing £13bn from public services, wages and pensions and £12bn on benefits.

The other £5bn would be found from “feeble measures” to tackle tax dodgers, Mr Griffiths claimed.

But he warned: “The cuts would be twice as deep over the next two years as this year and previously.

“In other words, more than twice as much would be squeezed from welfare claimants and the poorest one-fifth of the population who own no net wealth at all than from the richest 1 per cent of the population, who are hiding somewhere between £2 trillion and £4tn in tax havens around the world.”

He said any government serious about closing the public-finance deficit could do so “at a stroke” by placing a modest 2 per cent wealth tax on the richest 10 per cent and abolishing the tax-haven status of Britain’s crown dependencies and overseas territories.

“However, the biggest winners from this Budget may turn out to be the very City of London crooks and spivs who fund the Tory Party,” Mr Griffiths said.

He added that a Tory victory on May 7 would be a green light for them to make “far deeper and quicker cuts in public services and the welfare state than Labour would, supplemented by more privatisation and a new barrage of anti-trade union laws.

“That is the real substance of this Tory-led government’s ‘long-term economic plan’ and why it must be derailed at the forthcoming general election.”

by Our News Desk