http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30327717Quote:
The plans set out by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday will require government spending cuts "on a colossal scale" after the election, an independent forecaster has warned.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that just £35bn of cuts had already happened, with £55bn yet to come.
The detail of reductions had not yet been spelled out, IFS director Paul Johnson said.
As a result, he said it would be wrong to describe them as "unachievable".
However, voters would be justified in asking whether the chancellor was planning "a fundamental reimagining of the role of the state", Mr Johnson told a briefing in central London on Thursday.
If reductions in departmental spending were to continue at the same pace after the May 2015 election as they had over the past four years, welfare cuts or tax rises worth about £21bn a year would be needed by 2019/20, at a time when the Conservatives were committed to income tax cuts worth £7bn, according to the IFS.
Mr Johnson added: "One thing is for sure - if we move in anything like this direction, whilst continuing to protect health and pensions, the role and shape of the state will have changed beyond recognition."
The IFS is generally politically neutral, having attracted
criticism from both sides of the spectrum. It is no left-wing organisation. Covering the same story, the right-leaning Telegraph went so far as to use the quote 'gruesome' in
its headline:
Quote:
He told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: "The scale of the cuts has been added to by one year further. We are looking at a world in which only about 40 per cent of them have been carried out in this Parliament, with 60 per cent to come. Cuts of up to 50 per cent per head in some of those non-protected department. Not even very close to halfway there.