Chancellor George Osborne’s deficit reduction policy could result in around one million public sector job losses and take public spending to it lowest level since the 1930s, the BBC reports.
Osborne announced in yesterday’s Autumn Statement that the deficit had not closed as fast as the Government had hoped, and is set to be more than £90bn this year.
Despite this, Osborne stated the deficit has been halved since this 2010 and is still set to fall further.
An Office for Budget Responsibility statement declared public spending would fall from £5,650 per head in 2009/10 – when the current Government took power – to £3,880 by 2019/20, representing a 12.6 per cent share of GDP and the lowest level since the 1930s.
OBR chairman Robert Chote described this as a “very sharp squeeze”, with 60 per cent of this forecast to come in the next parliament.
OBR forecasts predict such cuts would come mainly in the form of public sector job losses, but Confederation of British Industry director general John Cridland told the BBC the Government would have to be “much more imaginative” about how it would cut spending.
Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable has accused the Conservatives plans to reduce the deficit as “brutal” and “simply not realisable.”
