British finance minister outlines tough new welfare cuts

British finance minister George Osborne said on Monday that the government will slash the welfare bill by £10 billion as it seeks to tame a massive deficit.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne told his Conservative party that the world’s seventh largest economy was “healing” but that Britain needed to stick to the course of tough austerity measures.

He 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 for jobless people.

Osborne also ruled out a so-called “mansion tax” on big houses, a move that is likely to anger the Liberal Democrats, the junior partners in the coalition government who favour squeezing the rich.

“The great bulk of savings must come from cutting government spending, not raising taxes,” Osborne said to applause from delegates at the party conference in the central English city of Birmingham.

“We have to find greater savings in the welfare bill, £10 billion (US$16.1 billion) of welfare savings by the first full year of the next parliament” in 2016/17, he said.