Gordon Brown - liar? (update)

David Cameron's speech on the issue of Gordon Brown and "honesty" & "trust".

"Wednesday after Wednesday, the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons and repeated the line that the coming battle was between Labour investment on the one hand and Tory cuts on the other," said Mr Cameron.

"All those words have turned to dust and, as I consistently warned week after week, reality has now caught up with our Prime Minister.

"Gordon Brown was denying something that his own civil servants were telling him was true.

"In this confidential Treasury document, written just five months ago, the Government plans to cut spending on public services over the next four years.

"The tables also reveal that the Labour Government is planning to cut capital expenditure - that is spending on schools, hospitals, roads and other capital projects - over the same period.

"Let me make it clear: they are not wrong to be planning cuts but they are wrong to try to cover up their plans for cuts.

"This is about honesty, it is about trust. This is about not taking people for fools. And on this issue, as I have to say on so many others, the Prime Minister does not seem to have learned."

Thanks to The Telegraph for the video and the transcript.


The Telegraph also report another interesting claim (my emphasis):

"The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) had calculated that the Budget plans will mean an average 2.3 per cent annual cut for Whitehall departments in the next spending round.

The Treasury papers show that the Government is actually expecting the average cut to be 9.3 per cent.

That suggests the Treasury is expecting benefits payments and debt interest costs to be higher than the IFS had estimated, and tax revenues to be weaker.

The leaked papers also show that by 2013/14, the Treasury expects to be paying out £63 billion on interest payments on the national debt.

That figure, higher than the education budget for England, was omitted from the published Budget papers. "

This is a scandal and one that needs pushing and pushing until Gordon Brown is forced to resign in complete humiliation; then a general election needs to be called so that the repairing of the UK's economy can begin.