Clegg faces IFS ‘trashing’ backlash
Nick Clegg faces criticism after attacking the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) assessment of the spending review as “complete nonsense”.
The deputy prime minister’s comments came after the economics thinktank said the spending review’s approach to welfare and public services would have a regressive impact.
Labour leader Ed Miliband hit out at Mr Clegg’s comments on Friday afternoon, saying his Liberal Democrat counterpart’s tactics would not succeed in winning people over.
Mr Clegg said the government fundamentally disagreed with the IFS, arguing its commentary was “distorted” because it only considered the tax and benefits system.
The IFS’ acting director, Carl Emmerson, had said the Treasury’s own analysis showed the poorest would be hit hardest by cuts to both public services and welfare payments.
“Our analysis continues to show that, with the notable exception of the richest two per cent, the tax and benefit components of the fiscal consolidation are, overall, being implemented in a regressive way,” he explained.
“But this is not to say that it is unfair: fairness will always be in the eye of the beholder.”
Mr Clegg took a more uncompromising view.
“I think you have to call a spade a spade,” he told the Guardian newspaper.
“It goes back to a culture of how you measure fairness that took root under Gordon Brown’s time, where fairness was seen through one prism and one prism only which was the tax and benefits system.
“It is a complete nonsense to apply that measure, which is a slightly desiccated Treasury measure.”
Mr Clegg said people lived on public services like childcare and social care in addition to the benefits they receive.
“All of those things have been airbrushed out of the picture by the IFS,” he added.
The deputy prime minister made the comments as he returned to London following a question-and-answer session with David Cameron in Nottingham, in which one disabled person had told him he was “picking on the weakest people in society”.
Mr Clegg had argued in response that “fear is a very powerful emotion” and insisted afterwards he was comfortable with the coalition government’s approach to the spending review.
“You have to dig down deep and look into your conscience and do that on a daily basis,” he said yesterday.
“You have to ask yourself whether you are comfortable with what has been decided.
“I have struggled with this a lot but I genuinely think with all the twists and turns of the internal debate I feel my conscience is telling me this is the best possible thing we could have done.”
Labour moved on to the offensive on Friday, with leader Mr Miliband calling on Mr Clegg to stop “trashing” the IFS.
“This was a spending review driven by ideology, hitting lower and middle income families the hardest,” he said.
“The unedifying spectacle of Mr Clegg rubbishing the IFS will convince nobody of the government’s case.”
Labour’s shadow education secretary Andy Burnham launched a scathing attack of his own on Mr Clegg, accusing him of presiding over a “Tory government in which Liberal Democrats have accepted jobs”.
“It is hard to detect any discernible Liberal Democrat influence in the detail of Wednesday’s announcements,” he wrote in an article for the Guardian.
“One by one, Nick Clegg’s reassurances to his MPs, councillors and members are falling to bits.
