UK Emergency Budget 'Will Cost 1.3 Million Jobs'

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

Perilous Times

UK Emergency Budget 'Will Cost 1.3 Million Jobs'

1:40am UK, Wednesday June 30, 2010
James Jordan, Sky News Online

The Chancellor's austerity budget will cost more than a million jobs across the UK, according to unpublished Treasury papers on the effects of the spending cuts.


The Guardian reports that the estimates of the impact of the spending squeeze show the Government is expecting between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs go in the public sector and between 600,000 and 700,000 to disappear in the private sector by 2015.

The report outlining the 1.3 million job cuts was produced by civil servants for ministers in the days leading up to the emergency budget.

According to the newspaper, a slide from the presentation reads: "100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts."

In the Budget, George Osborne outlined plans to cut some Whitehall department budgets by 25%, resulting in large-scale public sector job losses.

The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5 million jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze.

Budget Calculator

Those estimates appear ambitious given the lack of growth in the world economy and jitters surrounding the markets.

Opposition leaders and trade unions said the figures proved that the scale of the cuts in public spending would hamper Britain's economic recovery.

Alistair Darling, the shadow chancellor, said: "Far from being open and honest, as George Osborne put it, he failed to tell the country there would be very substantial job losses as a result of his Budget.

"The Tories did not have to take these measures. They chose to take them.

"They are not only a real risk to the recovery but hundreds of thousands of people will pay the price for the poor judgement of the Conservatives, fully supported by the Liberal Democrats."

Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT transport union has called for "general and co-ordinated strike action" to stop the government's "savage assault on jobs".

Speaking at his union's annual conference in Aberdeen he said: "This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the trade union movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers.

"I have no hesitation in saying that it will take general and co-ordinated strike action across the public and private sectors to stop their savage assault on jobs, living standards and public services."

A statement from the Treasury said: "The Independent Office of Budget Responsibility forecasts that unemployment will fall in every year and employment will rise, as the Guardian's article acknowledges."