Departmental spending cuts of up to 20%
George Osborne has today announced that a number of departments within the UK government could see their budgets slashed by up to 20% as the need to shave £60 billion from the UK budget in the short-term begins to become a reality. Departments such as welfare, tax credits and pensions are likely to be hit hardest with a major crackdown on benefit fraud and benefit cheats likely to be announced in the short-term.
George Osborne has so far been very impressive as he continues to back up David Cameron and his quest to gain voter approval of the many moves afoot to reduce the budget deficit. You could argue that the coalition has made few mistakes regarding the budget deficit in the short term but in reality we are only now approaching the business end of the situation. The truth is that David Cameron and George Osborne will not be able to please everybody all of the time and we could see significant friction between various departments, employers, employees and unions.
However, there are a great number of difficult decisions to be made in the short to medium term and the longer David Cameron and George Osborne leave these inevitable cuts the longer it will take the UK financial position to improve.
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