Osborne: cuts needed to avoid UK debt crisis

Chancellor George Osborne has said Britain will be hit by a sovereign debt crisis if businesses and unions do not back the government’s £110 billion spending cuts.

Speaking at the British Chamber of Commerce in the wake of the Portugal’s bail out plea, Osborne said the reason for the cuts were clear.

He said ‘dark forces’ denied the need for action and they were ‘playing Russian roulette with our sovereignty’, reported The Daily Telegraph.

He said the eurozone sovereign debt crisis showed the dangers Britain was facing if it did not cut its debt.

‘If you hear the stories about the cuts and still wonder why our country needs to take these difficult decisions, then look at what is happening around us. First Greece, then Ireland, [now] Portugal,’ he said.

Businesses would be put ‘centre stage’ said Osborne, who said he would tip the economy away from financial services and towards manufacturing.

Business secretary Vince Cable used the conference to launch his initiative to cut red tape and asked for firms to put forward what measures should be reformed or scrapped.

The business department of the government revealed the outcome of its ‘one in, one out’ policy, which means a old rule has to be scrapped before a new one is implemented. Of the 157 regulations proposed, just 46 survived.