United Kingdom government borrowing reaches six-year high in October

What should we be looking for from the chancellor this week?

But Osborne simply said it was fair that the police should have to bear their share of deficit-reduction measures, and repeatedly declined to offer any assurance that officer numbers would not be hit.

Martin Abrams, public transport campaigner, Campaign for Better Transport, said: ‘The bus crisis across the country is now causing real hardship for many people.

The government has claimed planned cuts to tax credits for low-income families will be offset by a rise in the national minimum wage, but economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a London-based research institute, have published a study showing the losses inflicted would by far outweigh the gains of higher pay.

Osborne denied his overall focus on cutting public spending might hurt Britain’s attempts to prevent attacks like the ones seen in Paris earlier this month, saying spending on anti-terrorism defences would be increased by 30 percent.

The Institute of Directors (IOD), a business group, said 85 per cent of 1,211 members it surveyed backed Osborne’s plan to run a budget surplus by the 2019-20 financial year.

The Chancellor has finalised deals with Whitehall spending departments in the run-up to Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, which is expected to herald another harsh round of budget reductions.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith said: “This morning the Chancellor let slip that the government still hopes to try and hide cuts to tax credits in the black box of Universal Credit, but that just won’t wash”.

“And of course, British businesses and workers will benefit from this decision too, which is worth £29 billion to the United Kingdom supply chain”.

The chancellor has attempted to calm fears that changes will damage national security by increasing counterterrorism spending by 30 per cent, seeing it rise to £15.1 billion over five years. There will also be a new digital exploitation centre to extra data from mobile phones and computers seized from suspected terrorists.

I would say he has four targets.

Prime Minister David Cameron has already announced that the SAS and other special forces will get an additional £2 billion to improve their equipment and that another 1,900 intelligence staff will be recruited.

The amount of borrowing was much higher than what economists had forecast.

“Now it seems he is being forced to take our advice as his economic and fiscal plans are falling apart”.

The report has been released at the same time as a broad coalition of charities, NGOs and Trade Unions including Campaign for Better Transport, The Association of Colleges, NUS, The Ramblers, Independent Age and Greenpeace have written to the Chancellor calling on him to protect buses from any further cuts in the Spending Review.

Another way out involves phasing in the tax credit cuts over a number of years or only making the changes applicable to new claimants.