Cut! Cut! Cut!

Osborne tells ministers to find 40% savings in bid to axe £20bn from Whitehall budgets as SNP stages seats stunt to taunt Labour

GEORGE Osborne has told ministers to draw up plans for 40 per cent cuts as he prepares for a fresh assault on the UK deficit.

Officially launching his spending review, the Chancellor demanded a further £20billion of savings to Whitehall budgets by the end of the Parliament.

He told MPs that so-called ‘unprotected’ departments would have to come up with two separate savings plans, one of 25 per cent and the other of 40 per cent by 2020.

Only the NHS, schools, foreign aid and defence will not have to come up with the savings, which means the Scottish Government will also be able to protect its health and education budgets – if it wants to.

The Chancellor unveiled his plans on a day childish Nationalist MPs tried to lay claim to being the real opposition at Westminster – by stealing Labour’s seats.

The SNP seized on Labour’s decision to abstain on the Chancellor’s Finance Bill – 24 hours after taking the same stance on the Welfare Bill – and warned it would haunt the party at next year’s Holyrood elections.

Mr Osborne told ministers they would be expected to deliver ‘more for less’ in the Government’s drive to save £20billion a year by 2020.

The final cuts will not be decided until the autumn and although 40 per cent is the current aim, the final figure is not expected to be as high.

Greg Hands, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is writing to departments to set out plans to achieve savings of 25 per cent and 40 sent by 2019/20 in a repeat of what happened at the start of the last parliament in 2010.

Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee, Mr Osborne acknowledged that r i ng- f encing s pending on defence, schools, the NHS and international aid would mean deeper cuts elsewhere.

‘It is right for a Government to make a judgment about its priorities,’ he said.

‘We have made those commitments.

‘ That obviously i ncreases

‘Right to make a judgment’

pressures elsewhere in government. But government is ultimately about making these choices. I think we have made the right choices.’

On the day Westminster broke up for the summer recess, Nationalist MPs appeared demob-happy as they sneaked across the Chamber and took photos of themselves in the Labour frontbench seats in a stunt with echoes of their failed to bid to occupy the seat held for decades by Labour’s veteran MP Dennis Skinner.

SNP Glasgow South MP Stewart McDonald was so excited he appeared to breach parliamentary rules by taking a photograph of his colleagues in the seats from within the chamber and posted it on Twitter.

He was not the only Nationalist rushing to social media to boast about their antics. Pete Wishart tweeted: ‘We’re as well just taking over the “official” opposition seats n o w. #56rising’

Mhairi Black, the party’s 20year- old rising star, added: ‘A rearranging of f urniture is required in the House of Commons. SNP are clearly the only opposition after Labour fail to vote against the Finance Bill.’

Tommy Sheppard, a comedy club boss before becoming one of the SNP’s new MPs, tweeted: ‘SNP now in its proper place in House of Commons chamber – opposing the Tories.’ Roger Mullin, the party’s Treasury spokesman, said he sat through the Budget debate, in ‘growing incredulity’ at Labour’s failure to take a stand.

Labour said i t abstained because it supports aspects of the Finance Bill, such as raising the personal tax allowance threshold, and plans further scrutiny as it makes its way through parliament.