Cameron defends Budget as 610,000 public jobs to go
DAVID Cameron was forced to defend his government‘s public spending cuts yesterday when it emerged an estimated 610,000 public sector jobs will be lost.
The report by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts one in eight public sector jobs will be shed by the end of this parliament.
However, the report also estimates the private sector will generate an extra 1.95m extra jobs – and that the overall rise in employment will be around 1.3m over the next five years. Overall employment will rise in every year of the this parliament.
The report claims public sector jobs would have fallen even quicker over the next two years under Labour proposals, largely due to the coalition’s decision to freeze public sector pay.
A Treasury spokesman told City A.M. these losses are “unavoidable”.
David Cameron and caretaker Labour leader Harriet Harman clashed over the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions, with the Labour leader claiming the job losses would create “abject misery”. Cameron countered, accusing Harman of scoring “a spectacular own goal”, given the cuts are expected to result in an overall rise in employment.
The issue rocketed to centre stage after a separate leaked Treasury memo suggested as many as 1.3m jobs would be lost over the course of the next parliament, with 600,000 staff being shed from the public sector and 700,000 from private firms dependent on state contracts. However, it also said that the private sector would create 2.5m new jobs, boosting total employment.