SCOTLAND'S budget will need to be cut by almost £4.5bn to help reduce overall UK spending by £50bn to hit the level forecast for 2020 in the UK Government's Autumn Statement, the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) has claimed.

 

In a report, published today, the pressure group said other measures would include: abolishing the "triple lock", which protects the value of pensions; withdrawing winter fuel payments and free bus passes from richer pensioners; imposing a two-year freeze on benefits; ending national pay bargaining in the public sector and closing three Whitehall departments.

With a week to go to Chancellor George Osborne's last Budget before the General Election, the TPA urged all the main parties to "come clean" about the scale of belt-tightening to come. While each of the parties accepts the Government will have to impose further cuts after May 7, there is little clarity so far on exactly where the axe would fall.

Labour claims Mr Osborne would need to slash £70bn from UK Government spending to hit his target of running a surplus by the end of the next Parliament while the Conservatives insist that their plans can be achieved with reductions of around £30bn.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, Whitehall's independent forecaster, said at the time of the Autumn Statement in December that the Chancellor's plans implied spending as a proportion of GDP reaching 35.2 per cent - the lowest level since the 1930s - by 2020.

To meet this forecast, the new report calculates that cuts of £50bn would be required.

The TPA said that almost £7.5bn of this could be found by abolishing the Departments for Business, Energy and Culture, Media and Sport as well as £4.4bn by bringing Scotland's central grant in line with Wales's.