Spending Review: Osborne wields axe

[WestVirginiaRebel]

BBC News:

Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts for decades, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.

The pension age will rise sooner than expected, some incapacity benefits will be time limited and other money clawed back through changes to tax credits and housing benefit.

A new bank levy will also be brought in - with full details due on Thursday.

Mr Osborne said the four year cuts were guided by fairness, reform and growth.

But shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, for Labour, called the review a "reckless gamble with people's livelihoods" which risked "stifling the fragile recovery" - a message echoed by the SNP, despite smaller than expected cuts in Scotland.

Mr Osborne ended his hour-long Commons statement by claiming the 19% average cuts to departmental budgets were less severe than expected. This is thanks to an extra £7bn in savings from the welfare budget and a £3.5bn increase in public sector employee pension contributions.

'Frontline cuts'

The chancellor claimed it meant his savings were less than the 20% cuts Labour had planned ahead of the general election.

BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders said that, at first glance, "the cuts to the welfare benefit are regressive, in the most basic sense of costing families in the lower half of the income distribution more".

Local councils are also in the firing line, with the amount of money they receive from government cut by 7.1% from April.

The Local Government Association said the move would "hit councils and the residents they serve very hard and will inevitably lead to cuts at the frontline".

Outlining the £81bn cuts package, Mr Osborne vowed to restore "sanity to our public finances and stability to our economy".

He told MPs: "Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt.

"It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future."
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The welfare state continues to come home to roost.

[Argyle58]

......And yet, the libs in this country are trying to make the same mistakes. Examples mean nothing, theory means all.