UK government to slash welfare payments by another £10 billion
Chancellor tells party conference of austerity plan and reveals shares scheme for workers
Britain's government will slash the welfare bill by a further £10 billion (HK$125 billion) as it seeks to tame a massive deficit, finance minister George Osborne said yesterday.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne also unveiled plans to allow British workers to give up their employment rights in exchange for shares in the company they work for.
He told his Conservative party's annual conference that the world's seventh-largest economy was "healing" but that Britain needed to stick to the course of tough austerity measures.
"The great bulk of savings must come from cutting government spending, not raising taxes," Osborne said to applause from delegates in Birmingham.
"We have to find greater savings in the welfare bill, £10 billion of welfare savings by the first full year of the next parliament" in 2016/17, he said.
The reductions are in addition to the £18 billion in welfare cuts that are already planned by 2015 by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition with the smaller Liberal Democrats, which came to power in 2010.
Osborne insisted the rich would bear the burden of taxation, but indicated that young unemployed people were likely to see reduced housing benefit and that there could be a limit to the number of children covered by benefits.