Cabinet ministers have been ordered to plan for swingeing cuts to their day-to-day departmental budgets of up to 40 per cent -- putting whole swathes of spending programmes and hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.
| Seriously impressive. Would that the American government did the same. |
The plans, spelt out in a letter from Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat Treasury chief secretary, go much further than proposals announced in last month's Budget aimed at cutting Britain's huge deficit.
Then, George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that Whitehall budgets faced cuts of about a quarter. |