Clegg stands by Osborne over welfare cuts
By politics.co.uk staff
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has backed the Treasury’s calls for cuts as No 11’s battle with Iain Duncan Smith continues.
The work and pensions secretary is seeking to secure funds enabling him to implement sweeping reforms of the benefits system.
“Conversations” with the Treasury as the comprehensive spending review approaches are continuing. Yesterday Mr Duncan Smith told MPs he did not enter the government “to see the worst off suffer more”, as he admitted would happen if the emergency Budget’s provisions were implemented without reform.
“In this tough fiscal climate, cuts to the welfare budget are unavoidable,” Mr Clegg wrote in an article for the Times newspaper.
“But at the same time, we will be simplifying the current Byzantine benefits system and providing real incentives for people to move off benefits and into work. We are not willing to simply cut back a failed welfare system – it needs root-and-branch reform.”
He acknowledged that reforming the benefits system “inevitably creates losers as well as winners” and laid out the increase between 1997 and 2010 from £63 billion to £87 billion, a real terms increase of 40%.
The Liberal Democrat leader argued the changes were “profoundly liberal in intent and effect”, however, adding: “The liberal attitude to the distribution of power is in stark contrast to the present model of the welfare state – based entirely on centralised, top-down solutions.”
A Populus poll for the Times out today suggests voters doubt Mr Clegg’s arguments about liberal policies. Over seven out of ten agreed with the proposition that he has changed his mind on key issues now that he is working with the Conservatives.
Of the 1,508 adults surveyed 51% thought Mr Clegg is in politics to help the poorest in society and make Britain fairer, however.
Among Lib Dem voters at the general election, only 27% said they would have voted for a different party if they had known of Mr Clegg’s decision to enter a formal coalition with the Conservatives.
