Osborne sets clear welfare challenge to Labour – and his coalition partners

We already knew that the Chancellor would focus on welfare as a field ripe for further cuts in his speech in Birmingham today. When he delivered that speech, George Osborne announced that the Treasury’s current forecasts suggest that £12 billion of further welfare cuts are needed in the first two years of the next Parliament, and framed this as a challenge to all parties not to let voters down by refusing to cut benefits. He said:

‘So when you see people on the telly who say that welfare can’t be cut anymore – or, even worse, promising they will reverse the changes we’ve already made and increase housing benefit – ask yourself this: way public services would they cut instead? What taxes they would put up in their place? Or would they borrow and spend more, and risk our country’s economic stability again?

‘This is what I mean when I say Britain has a choice.