A housing minister admits "difficult choices" will have to be made in the chancellor's Spring budget tomorrow, but rejects the idea the government is "imposing austerity". Matthew Pennycook adds, "we are taking very decisive action to turn around 14 years of stagnation and low growth". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
š
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, I'm not going to pre-empt what comes in the spring statement tomorrow, but I reject
00:04the idea that this government is imposing austerity.
00:09You'll know the previous government, when it took office, cut overall public spending.
00:13We have allocated in the budget last year Ā£290 billion of public spending, and that's
00:18allowed us, for example, to invest Ā£26 billion in our NHS, bringing down waiting lists now
00:24for five months in a row.
00:26So terms like austerity can be very easily bandied around, but that is not what's happening
00:30here.
00:31I reject that assertion entirely.
00:33Departmental settlements will come in the spending review later this year, but under
00:39this government, day-to-day spending will be 3.3 per cent this year, be an increase
00:44in real terms throughout this Parliament again.
00:46What we're not seeing here is austerity, but we do have a very challenging fiscal context.
00:51Absolutely, there's no question about that, and difficult choices will have to be made.
00:56I'm not going to speculate again, if you'll forgive me, on OBR forecasts.
00:59We'll see those in the spring statement tomorrow, but we are taking very decisive action to
01:04turn around 14 years of stagnation and low growth.
01:09In Parliament just yesterday, for example, we passed the second reading of the Planning
01:12and Infrastructure Bill, a bill that will streamline the delivery of new homes and critical
01:16infrastructure and will unleash growth across the country.