NICK Clegg has defended the Coalition's plan to ring-fence certain departmental budgets as Cabinet colleagues press for it to be abandoned.
The Chancellor must find an extra £11.5 billion of cuts for 2015/16 but has promised to protect the budgets for health, schools, overseas aid and defence procurement.
This means other Whitehall departments are facing cuts of between 5% and 10%. It is believed the deadline for secretaries of state submitting plans was yesterday.
One Cabinet insider said that at the start of the parliament when cuts had to be found, ministers were enthusiastic, but now were "having a very tough time of it".
The Deputy Prime Minister said any fresh cuts to the welfare budget would only go ahead if the Conservatives agreed to reform of non-means-tested benefits such as pensioner bus passes and winter fuel allowance.
Given David Cameron has insisted he will protect such benefits for this parliament, means neither is likely.
Mr Clegg said the departmental spending round currently being thrashed out would not be as "gory" as the last one but refused to say how badly non-protected departments would be hit.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, and Conservative Cabinet ministers such as Defence Secretary Philip Hammond have lobbied for ring-fences to be lifted.
Mr Clegg said: At a difficult time like this, protecting our NHS spending, protecting spending on schools and honouring our international obligations to developing countries was a big decision but it was the right one to take and to stick to."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article