Coalition’s ‘Commons neglect’ over Osborne announcement
Labour has launched a protest against chancellor George Osborne’s plans to reveal the details of £6 billion of spending cuts “to the media rather than to parliament”.
The Conservatives spent the last 13 years in opposition complaining that Labour ministers were more interested in briefing journalists than keeping the Commons informed of major developments.
Now the tables have turned, one of the first major indications of the new government’s spending plans is to take place away from parliament.
Mr Osborne announced his intention to reveal fuller details of his planned spending cuts for the current 2010/11 financial year last Monday. The proposed cuts were bitterly opposed by Labour during the general election campaign.
Leader of the House Sir George Young has received a letter from his Labour shadow Rosie Winterton outlining her objections to the plans.
“If the Treasury’s announcement on Monday is as has been reported, it will be of great significance to our country’s finances and its future,” she wrote.
“Given the Queen’s Speech will be debated the following day, it is difficult to believe that the government could not have found space in the parliamentary business for the chancellor’s proposals to be announced to the House.
“The chancellor’s decision in this matter raises troubling questions about how the government will conduct itself in the future.”
The Liberal Democrats, now coalition partners with the Tories, were forced to accept the Conservative agenda for the public finances as part of the price of gaining ministerial seats.
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he expected the government to become unpopular as a result of Mr Osborne’s economic measures.
“I have no illusions that because of the desperate black hole that Gordon Brown and the Labour party have handed over to us, which I suspect will be even worse than they admitted to before the election, this government is going to have to do some pretty unpopular things,” Mr Clegg told the Yorkshire Evening Post newspaper.
“And we might be pretty unpopular for a while and that is why it’s really important that we have committed ourselves to a five-year government because we are going to have to get through the pain of dealing with the black hole in the public finances.”
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