Did Gordon Brown mislead Parliament?
As the saga continues to roll on there are concerns in many newspapers today that Gordon Brown may well have misled parliament in the run-up to the last budget. Despite the fact that in public the UK government continued to present an ambition to maintain public-sector investment, behind-the-scenes leaked documents show the UK government already had plans in place to cut real investment in public services by 9.7%.
This is yet another major obstacle for Gordon Brown because while he is under pressure because of his handling of the economy, indications that he may well have misled Parliament are a major problem. The Conservative party is set to make great play of this particular situation because while the government has rejected claims that Parliament was misled, it has not challenged the fact that these documents appear to be genuine. So what exactly is going on?
The problem for Gordon Brown is the fact that it looks as though he had plans to cut public-sector investment but may well have decided not to implement these until after the general election. Fighting on a ticket which would put the Labour Party as the spending party and the Conservatives as the cuts party he was obviously looking to put as much space between the two parties as possible.
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