Comprehensive Spending Review: Osborne's big day

The fiscal plans that our Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne announces today could shape the future of the UK for a generation.

This is not just a break with how the Government was fiscally run under Labour, this an about-face sprint in the other direction.

As you would expect, OBV seeks to make no party political comment on Osborne’s ‘comprehensive spending review’, but there will be two key factors at play with this dramatic announcement: First the UK’s debt which is running into the hundreds of billions. Most modern countries have debt, but our's is said to be far too high. Second, is the Conservative ideology that ‘less Government, less taxes’, is better for the nation. We can only speculate as to where the cuts end and where ideology begins.

What we do know, however, is one way or another we’ll all be affected. It might be directly as one of the projected half a million public sector job cuts, it may be a service your local authority provides.

OBV along with a number of organisations has reminded the Government and its departments of its legal obligation to undertake comprehensive Equality Impact Assessments, (EIA) before submitting a budget. These measures help ensure that certain groups, including BMEs and people with disability, are not disproportionately affected by the cuts.

But as the details unfold today and in the coming weeks, we would like your views: how are you affected, what can you do to mitigate the pain, what should we do as a community that could face increased racism and a disproportionate hit from the cuts?

Lets us know. Let’s begin our own conversation.

Simon Woolley