RECOVERY will be one of the buzzwords in George Osborne's keenly awaited House of Commons statement tomorrow as he seeks to shift the emphasis away from the brutal years of austerity towards a more uplifting vision of a Britain finally on the mend.
Having for years resisted the idea of a Plan B focusing on rebuilding and infrastructure projects, the Chancellor will use his 2015/16 spending review to map out a bright future based on rebuilding and infrastructure projects.
The Treasury is keen to point out Mr Osborne has already announced an extra £3 billion on capital spending for 2015/16 and the suggestion now is he will commit many more billions of pounds for projects into the recovery years beyond.
The emphasis then will be cuts in current day-to-day spending – the aim for £11.5bn in extra savings/cuts has been achieved – and more investment in future capital spending.
The mantra will be that the Coalition Government's fiscal toughness has created the opportunity to plough money into schemes like high-speed rail, green energy and the roll-out of superfast broadband.
At the weekend, the Chancellor said: "We are out of intensive care and our job now is to secure the recovery."
After George the Builder has spelled out his grand vision for the next decade or more, it will be left to his deputy – Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander – to inform MPs on Thursday about the planned wishlist of projects stretching far into the future.
The two ministerial statements will be used to bolster the Coalition's anti-independence stance that, after the deep pain of cuts, Scotland can look to a bright future as part of a recovering, vibrant United Kingdom.
But the SNP and their pro-independence allies will insist that first it was the Conservative Party offering a crash diet of cuts and austerity, then it was their Liberal Democrat allies and now it is Labour.
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