LONDON – Hundreds of thousands of British police, teachers and other frontline public sector workers face the axe, the Labour Party has warned, after ministers were ordered to draw up plans for spending cuts of up to 40 per cent.
The treasury said government departments were being asked to prepare “initial planning assumptions” as a starting point for negotiations in the autumn spending review.
Treasury sources insisted that departments would not actually have to implement cuts on that scale, but Labour accused ministers of “softening up” the public for big job losses.
Shadow education secretary Ed Balls said the first blow of the axe could fall as early as today with the review of the government’s building schools for the future programme. He claimed rebuilding projects at 750 schools, approved under the former Labour government, were set to be cancelled.
Mr Balls, a contender for the Labour leadership, described the government plans for tackling the deficit as “economically unwise and socially deeply, deeply unfair”.
“We know from the 1980s and from the 1930s, when we had the Great Depression, that if you try to cut spending and public services really hard and assume that the private sector is going to come along and create lots of new jobs, it doesn’t work out that way,” he said.
In his emergency budget last month, chancellor George Osborne warned departments faced cuts averaging 25 per cent over the next four years – apart from health and overseas aid, whose budgets were ring-fenced.
Mr Osborne has now instructed the ministry of defence and the department for education to draw up plans showing the impact that budget cuts of 10 per cent and 20 per cent would have.
The rest of Whitehall was told to prepare plans for cuts of 25 per cent and 40 per cent. – (PA)