Britain's Treasury Minister Liam Byrne warned on Thursday of tough times ahead for public spending, with economic recession, rising unemployment and high levels of government debt biting hard.
A row over public spending blew up this week after Andrew Lansley, health spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, said 10 percent spending cuts would be needed in many government departments — outside health, education and aid — after 2011.
Byrne, appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week when Prime Minister Gordon Brown reshuffled his ministerial team, said the ruling Labour Party planned for overall public spending to rise until 2013/14.
"(But) there are going to be some pretty difficult choices to be made, there are going to be conditions of constraint and there are going to be difficult decisions on, for example, tax," Byrne told BBC radio.
Opinion polls show the ruling Labour Party looks likely to be defeated at the next general election due by mid-2010.
Labour is seeking to set public spending as a key battle ground, and seized on Lansley comments on Wednesday, saying they were proof of Conservative plans to make swingeing cuts.
Byrne accused Conservatives of planning 5 billion pounds ($8.20 billion) in cuts this year and 6 billion pounds next year to finance "a series of unfunded tax promises."
"They just haven't got their sums to add up properly," he said.
But Conservative Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond said Byrne was not facing up to reality.
"Whoever is in government will have to clean up the mess that Gordon Brown has made of the public finances," he said.
He accused Labour of quoting figures which ignore the effects of inflation, and took no account of forecast rises in unemployment and increasing costs of servicing government debt.
Last month ratings agency Standard & Poor's said the outlook for Britain's precious triple-A credit rating was "negative" and no longer "stable" because of fears government debt could soar close to 100 percent of GDP.
British government borrowing is forecast to hit a record 175 billion pounds this year due to the recession and bank bailouts.
Finance minister Alistair Darling, who is expecting an economic recovery towards the end of the year, has said he does not expect to balance the books for nearly a decade.
"What matters to people is…the money that is spent on health, on education, on police, on defence," Hammond told BBC radio. "And Gordon Brown's … own budget shows that that total will be cut by 7 percent in real terms over a three-year period to 2013/14."
"Those are real figures. And for Liam Byrne… to sit here pretending there are no hard choices to be made, pretending we're not in a mess, is frankly dishonest."
