Osborne Orders Public Land Sale To Cut Deficit

Arts funding faces dramatic cuts after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was told to prepare for a budget reduction of up to 40%.

Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee, Mr Osborne acknowledged that ring-fencing spending on defence, schools, the NHS and global aid would mean deeper cuts elsewhere.

Treasury Chief Secretary Greg Hands is now writing to ministers instructing them to start drawing up plans to deliver the necessary savings over the next four years.

That’s more or less the same percentage they were forced to cut after the last spending review in 2010.

Britain’s independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has said delivering cuts of the same scale of the past government is likely to prove harder as numerous easy-to-make savings have already been made.

“It’s a matter for each department, and we will have proposals in November”.

However it will also point out that the Ministry of Defence alone now owns around one per cent of all the land in the United Kingdom – some 227,300 hectares.

Mr Osborne said the savings – which follow the £12 billion in welfare cuts and £5 billion from tackling tax avoidance announced in the Budget – will complete the Conservatives’ plan to eliminate the deficit in the public finances.

He said on Tuesday that government departments should look at selling public land under their control as part of the push for savings that match the level of austerity Osborne sought five years ago when he began his spending squeeze.

Mr Osborne told MPs that “with careful management of public money, we can get more for less”. “If we do not deal with this debt, we run risks with our economic security”.

But Labour shadow chancellor Chris Leslie accused Mr Osborne of not having a clue.

“Departments are not being given a clear sense from the Treasury of what to plan for in the Spending Review, particularly since we’ve seen three sets of spending plans in the last few months”.