Deficit cut too slow, say Tories
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Conservative leader David Cameron slammed Labour’s plans to halve the UK’s £167bn deficit by 2014, saying faster action is needed.
In the Budget, published this week, Labour announced it aims to cut the deficit from 11.8 per cent of GDP to 5.2 per cent over the next four years.
Darling said: “Should the economy perform better than expected, we will be able to do more to reduce the deficit.”
But reacting to Darling’s Budget speech, Cameron told Parliament that Labour proposals will not cut the deficit fast enough.
He said: “They have confirmed in the red book that the deficit this year at 11.8 per cent of GDP is the worst in the OECD, except for Ireland. That is what this Labour Government has left us with.
“In 1997, the deficit was £6bn. Today it is £167bn. The Chancellor repeated his hope to halve the deficit by 2014. Let us be clear about what this means. It means in four years time we will have a deficit almost as big as when Denis Healey went to the IMF in the 1970s.
“The risk to recovery is not in dealing with the deficit now, it is in not dealing with the deficit now.”
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “The battle we have just seen between the Chancellor and the leader of the opposition was a depressing spectacle. A phoney war to cover up the fact that they are both the same.
“Neither has the courage to come up with details of the cuts we need to tackle Britain’s deficit. This Budget was a Budget in denial about the scale of change needed.”
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