Letwin brands CSR a “manifesto for fat government and fake savings”
The Shadow Chancellor has branded Gordon Brown’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) a “manifesto for fat government and fake savings.”
Speaking this afternoon in the Commons, Oliver Letwin attacked Labour’s record on public services claiming increases in spending of £30 billion on the NHS still leaves a million on waiting lists and with a doubling of Home Office spending there are still one million crimes a year.
Mr Letwin said this afternoon’s announcement “would only result in more bureaucracy, more targets, more centralisation, more regulation more borrowing and more tax”.
In his statement, the Chancellor promised that spending would rise in key areas such as national security and health but that over 100,00 civil service jobs will be cut to fund increased public spending.
Mr Letwin responded, saying: “What we have just heard is a manifesto for fat government and fake savings.”
“The only thing that the Chancellor’s fat government has delivered is fat taxes.
“When will he accept that what’s needed if government is really going to cut the flab is a complete change of lifestyle? The fact is that fat government is not fit enough to deliver.”
He claimed that under Labour the number of senior mangers in the NHS had increased at a rate three times faster than that of nurses.
The Conservatives, he promised, would cut bureaucracy, inefficiency, quangos, regulations, borrowing, waiting lists and crime.
Mr Brown referred back to the previous Conservative governments’ records, pointing out that “waste was three million unemployed” and “waste was two recessions under the Conservative government”.
Liberal Democrats Shadow Chancellor Vincent Cable welcomed the Government’s commitment to resources for education and law and order.
Mr Cable suggested that the Tory and Labour policies were “basically the same”. He referred to the issue of cutting waste and told MPs that clear choices had to be made.
Querying why, if such sweeping cuts are possibly, reductions in the civil service has not already occurred, Mr Cable pledged that the Liberal Democrats would face up to tough choices in spending.
