We must hold our nerve, says Clegg as the cutting begins

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says the coalition Government needs to keep its nerve as it embarks on the first of the spending cuts needed to tackle Britain's record £156bn deficit.

With Chancellor George Osborne set to announce the first 6bn of savings to be delivered this year, Mr Clegg said yesterday the "age of plenty" was over and the country needed to prepare for a period of "painful" retrenchment.

Even though he argued during the General Election campaign that the economy was too weak to start wielding the axe this year, the Liberal Democrat leader insisted his party was fully behind the programme.

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"We will take responsibility for all the decisions as much as anybody in the Government," he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.

He launched a fresh attack on Labour, accusing that government of making a series of spending commitments it knew it could not afford to honour in the days before the election.

"The age of plenty where money could be thrown around in almost carelessness, which is what the outgoing Labour government has done for some time now, is over. Yes, it is over," he said.

"There are going to be difficult decisions, they are going to be unpopular decisions, they are going to be controversial, we are going to have to hold our nerve."

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Mr Clegg said the crisis in the eurozone meant that they could not afford to wait until next year to begin tackling the deficit, as the Lib Dems had previously argued.

He said that the problems had been exacerbated by decisions taken by the former Labour government, apparently expecting it would be defeated.

Mr Osborne has said that the "great majority" of the savings this year will be used to start paying down the deficit.

Press reports over the weekend suggested that 513m will come from a "bonfire of the quangos".

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Vince Cable's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills looks set to be one of the big losers, with reported savings of 900m, while a further 200m could come from university funding.

It is reported that the Treasury has identified further savings from Whitehall's annual 3bn travel bill – including 125m on taxis. Further savings could come from the 1bn spent on government advertising.