Darling and Laws clash on cuts
By Alex Stevenson
Shadow chancellor Alistair Darling has accused the coalition government of going “far beyond” cuts based on waste and efficiency in his debut on the opposition benches.
The man who delivered the pre-election Budget two months ago was raising an urgent question which chief secretary to the Treasury David Laws – rather than chancellor George Osborne – chose to respond to.
“I think it’s important here as the government has difficult decisions to make, the chancellor should be ready to come to this house to justify what he’s doing,” he said.
Mr Laws repeated large sections of Monday’s announcement about the £6.243 billion of immediate spending cuts being implemented in the current 2010/11 financial year.
“We have finally got a government with guts and determination,” he said, to cheers from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs behind him.
Mr Darling defended his record in government, saying Labour’s plan to halve the deficit in a four-year period was “the right thing to do”.
He said cutting 10,000 student places, the Future Jobs Fund and the Child Trust Fund were measures which went beyond those necessary to deal with the economic situation.
“When during the general election campaign the Conservatives did not say they were going to cut beyond eliminating beyond waste and efficiency, they’ve gone far beyond that,” he insisted.
But Mr Darling attracted laughter from the government benches when he claimed: “We must live within our means, as I have always said.”
The chief secretary to the Treasury, one of five Lib Dems in the coalition Cabinet, responded by praising Mr Darling for having worked in government during the recent financial crisis.
“He had to deal with a prime minister of the type we had at the time,” he said. The shadow chancellor raised his eyebrows in response.
Mr Laws then attacked Mr Darling by saying: “The only thing missing from his statement was a single serious proposal about how to deal with the huge financial deficit that we’ve got.”
