British finance minister George Osborne will order ministries to make a further 2.5 billion pound in cuts over the next two years in his budget this week, the government said today. The spending cuts come on top of drastic reductions that have already been made since 2010 when the coalition government headed by Osborne's Conservative party took office.
Osborne will unveil his budget in parliament on tomorrow."All unprotected departmental resource budgets will be reduced by a further 1.0 percent a year for the next two years. It will save 2.5 billion pound (USD 3.7 billion, 2.9 billion euros) over those two years," a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters.
"That will help fund further investment in capital spending which will be announced in tomorrow's budget."
Health, schools and overseas development aid will continue to be protected, the spokesman said.The Ministry of Defence will benefit from rollover of 1.6 billion pound over the next two years, having underspent on its budget by that amount, he added.It was up to government departments to decide whether they would make any job cuts as a result of the decrease in spending, the spokesman said.Overall, analysts expect Osborne's budget to stick to his so-called Plan A of driving down a record deficit inherited from the previous Labour administration.Both Cameron and Osborne insist it is the right course despite calls from within and outside the government to curb massive spending cuts.
Britain was recently stripped of its top-level AAA credit rating.
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