Bill Carmichael: Cruellest cuts? I don’t think so

SO, how are you managing to cope in an age of “draconian” and “savage” Government spending cuts?

Sold the children into slavery yet? Applied for a place at the local workhouse? Chopped up your granny for firewood?

I doubt it, because despite all the hysteria by the unions about the brutal nature of the cuts, there actually haven’t been any yet – and those that are planned are modest.

In real terms, the Government plans to shave just one per cent per year off its budget over the next few years, so by 2015 we will return to the level of spending we had in 2007.

Funny, I don’t remember starvation in the streets and mass homelessness back in 2007, despite the then Labour government’s best efforts to bankrupt the country.

Far from paying off the national credit card, as some commentators would have you believe, the current Government is planning to add many hundreds of billions of pounds to the debt – a bill that will eventually have to be paid off by our children and grandchildren.

We are, in effect, stealing from future generations in order to fund profligate and unnecessary spending today.

What the coalition Government does intend to do is to gradually reduce the frighteningly high deficit – that is the difference between what we earn and what we spend each year, and therefore the rate at which we add to the total national debt.

Under the Government’s plans we’ll still be adding to the debt every year, although at a lower rate than under Labour’s crazed spending spree. The fact is, however, that the majority of the population fails to grasp this point.

The resulting confusion has been exploited by Labour and the unions to push the barefaced lie that cuts are somehow extreme and cruel.

For example a ComRes/Institute of Economic Affairs opinion poll this week asked people if the Government was planning to keep the national debt the same, reduce it by £350bn, or increase it by £350bn, over the next four years.

An astonishing 70 per cent thought the debt was being reduced and only 9 per cent correctly stated the debt was massively increasing.

This is a depressing finding, but the same poll provided some reasons for optimism.

It found a growing realism among the general public, and particularly among the young, that we cannot continue spending money that we don’t have.

For example the plan by the IEA to reduce public spending to 30 per cent of GDP (rather than 40 per cent under Government proposals) was backed by 70 per cent of respondents, and 55 per cent believe Government spending should be 35 per cent of GDP or lower.

Significantly, younger respondents were the most radical of all, with 67 per cent of under-25s backing big cuts in public spending.

I suppose this is only to be expected, as it is the young people who have been landed with the enormous bill as a result of their parents’ selfish and wilful refusal to live within their means.

What this demonstrates is that despite all the noise created by the beer-bellied placard wavers on recent demonstrations, the general public is overwhelmingly supportive of the cuts and many want to see them go much quicker to rescue the country from the mess Labour left us in.

We know as a proven fact that the best way of promoting economic growth, and helping the poor, is by reducing taxes.

And the best way of reducing taxes is by reducing government spending.

So perhaps the answer lies in a smaller, leaner state and hard working, self-reliant citizens who are allowed to keep more of the wealth they create to spend or save as they wish.

That sounds like a future we can all believe in.