Johnson: £8bn redundancy bill

Alan Johnson, Labour’s new shadow chancellor claims the spending review is driven by political, not economic concerns:

“If the taxpayer has to foot a comparable redundancy bill for the 490,000 jobs that are to go across the public sector, George Osborne has lined them up for an £8bn hit.

“That is the price of going too far and too fast. On a timetable determined by the date of next election, not the economic cycle.”