Brown cutting on Tory spending plans
By Alex Stevenson
Gordon Brown has accused the Tories of planning ten per cent spending cuts for Britain’s public services.
The claim, made in the prime minister’s first PMQs after seeing off rebel backbenchers on Monday evening, was based on an apparent admission by shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley.
He was responding to a report by the NHS Confederation which warned the NHS faces its toughest challenge yet in the coming years of restricted public spending.
Mr Lansley insisted health, international development and schools would all not suffer but that other areas would as a result.
“That does mean over three years after 2011 a ten per cent reduction in the departmental expenditure limits for other departments. It is a very tough spending requirement indeed,” he said on the Today programme.
The prime minister seized on his remarks, calling on Mr Cameron to deny the claims.
He later argued the public faced a choice between “a government increasing public spending” and a “leader who for the first time has now admitted public spending cuts”.
Mr Cameron had been shouted down after pressing the “next election isn’t going to be about Labour investment or Tory cuts”.
He pressed on by saying it would instead “be about the mismanagement of the public finances, the appalling deficits he has left and his plan for cuts”.
