Chancellor George Osborne needs to explain exactly where he intends to make the £12bn in cuts to welfare spending he outlined in the Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said.
Currently, the chancellor has outline just £2bn of the cuts he intends to make, with reductions planned for working-age benefits, but said that they would all be implemented by 2017-18.
Osborne has said that he intends to continue protecting pensioner benefits, which means that an even greater percentage of other benefits would need to be cut to reach the £12bn in savings outlined.
At the IFS post-Budget meeting, director Paul Johnson warned that “the cuts of more than 5% implied in each of 2016-17 and 2017-18 are twice the size of any year’s cuts over this parliament” with the path of cuts “more uncertain than ever”.
