George Osborne said UK business backed his cuts programme George Osborne has promised to see through the government’s spending cuts programme, saying it will “get us out of this stronger”.
The chancellor, who will unveil the Spending Review on Wednesday, said overcoming the deficit was key to the UK “paying our way in the world”.
He declined to discuss press reports that child benefits for 16 to 19-year-olds could be abolished.
Labour accused the chancellor of planning “economic masochism”.
Mr Osborne’s Spending Review will outline which areas of Whitehall’s budget will be hit the hardest, as the government attempts to reduce the £155bn deficit. The aim is to save £83bn in four years.
Ministers are understood to have agreed an 8% cut in the Ministry of Defence’s £37bn budget, following tense negotiations.
The government has also announced new sanctions to deal with benefit cheats, promising that anyone with three convictions could forfeit their rights to claim money from the state for up to three years.
Mr Osborne told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show: “We have to see this through”.
A special BBC News season examining the approaching cuts to public sector spending
He said: “The priority has been to target waste and welfare, to invest in our healthcare, to have real increases in our school budgets and to invest in the things that are going to make our economy strong…
“We have got to make some tough decisions but the priority is healthcare, children’s education, early years provision – particularly for some of our poorest – and the big infrastructure developments like Crossrail, Mersey Gateway, the synchrotron, broadband.
“Those things are actually going to get us out of this stronger and able to pay our way in the world.”
He added: “Our plan is the plan that will restore credibility to the public finances.
“It is what the IMF, the OECD, international observers say is necessary. It is what British business says is necessary.
“So we have to see this through, and the course which I set in the Budget is the one that we have to stick to.
“People in this country know we were on the brink of bankruptcy, and if we are going to have growth and jobs in the future we have got to move this country into a place where people can invest with confidence.”
But Labour’s shadow chancellor Alan Johnson today accused the government of “economic masochism”, adding that cuts could happen “too deeply and too quickly”, damaging the recovery.
He said he believed that a tax on banks should “play a bigger role” in cutting the deficit and that Labour would look at increasing capital gains tax.
Mr Johnson, who was made shadow chancellor last week, added: “I don’t want us to be in a double-dip recession – what it looks like to me, and I’m learning the jargon already, is an L-shaped recession.
“We’re bumping along the bottom, we’re not picking up any kind of momentum at all.”
Labour will unveil its own plans for the economy on Monday, setting out a £7bn “push for growth” funded largely by levies on the banks.
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