Alarm as ministers told to plan for 40% cutbacks [belfasttelegraph.co.uk]
- Published: 05 July 2010
Treasury ministers were accused yesterday of being "alarmist in the extreme" by announcing that they are instructing all but a few government departments to plan for 40 per cent cuts in their budgets.
Cuts on that scale would exceed anything ever done by a democracy and result in hundreds of thousand of public employees losing their jobs and a severe drop in the quality of public services. So long as the figure of 40 per cent sticks in people's minds, when they learn that the worst-affected departments are having to cut their budgets by 30 per cent or more, it will sound as if they have been spared the worst.
Today, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, is expected to announce cuts totalling £1.5bn, with £1bn to be slashed from the Department of Education budget. That means scrapping plans to rebuild 700 schools, and cutting back on youth clubs and projects such as Sure Start.
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