The Coalition Government’s determination to push ahead with
another round of cuts in today's Spending Review is a "costly and
avoidable" mistake, said Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party of
England and Wales. Setting out the Spending Review that will see £11.5bn
slashed from Whitehall budgets, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne told
the Commons the UK economy was "out of intensive care" but more cuts
were necessary to avoid a relapse. Labour leader Ed Miliband has confirmed that
Labour would match the current spending plans it inherits should it come into
government in 2015.
“Austerity is simply not working”, said Bennett. “As both
the IMF and OECD have indicated, Osborne’s relentless austerity measures have
failed. They are preventing the British economy going through the
transformation it needs. We need a program of investment in the real economy
that brings lasting benefits to society and generates meaningful employment and
stable incomes across the country.” Bennett added: “This spending review is a
clearly ideologically driven attack on the very fabric of our state.
"It’s an attack on those employed to deliver vital
public services, who face more job losses, continuing drops in real pay and
overwork in denuded departments.
“It’s an attack on local government, with both funding cuts
and a forced council tax freeze that prevents our elected local representatives
from making choices to preserve essential local services from social care to
libraries to children’s centres."
“And it is an attack on our environment, with the worst
level of cuts on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with
the Department for Energy close behind, just when we need to establish, after
years of this government’s failures, sensible policies and plans to reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions, deal with the impacts of climate change and secure
our food supplies.”
She added: “The TUC only this week reported 180,000 children
who have at least one parent working in the public sector are set to fall into
poverty by 2015. As a nation, a wealthy nation, we should not be expecting our
vital service providers to struggle along in such circumstances, let alone
their children.
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