Britain will need to cut spending when the economy fully recovers, finance minister Alistair Darling said on Tuesday without spelling out where the axe would fall.
Instead, Darling said there was still a role for targeted investment and said the "frontline" would get priority. Treasury officials said more detail would be forthcoming in the pre-budget report, which is usually made in November.
With the budget deficit expected to top 12 percent of gross domestic product and an election due within nine months, public spending has become a political battleground and financial markets are keen for details on how either main party will cut it.
Pointing to the conclusions of the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in London last weekend, Darling said economic support would have to continue for now to dig the world out of its worst downturn since World War II.
"To cut spending now would kill off the recovery. But when the recovery has been established, all countries must rebuild their fiscal strength," he said in a speech in Cardiff, Wales.
"Spending will have to be tighter everywhere — all the more reason for ensuring that the frontline comes first."
But Darling offered little fresh information on where cuts would come. Rather he tried to draw a distinction between his Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives by claiming they would cut expenditure ignoring the social cost.
Labour, on the other hand, believed in the "enabling hand of government" and would thus keep spending on areas where it believed it could make a difference, Darling said.
But it would also draw back in some areas as there were limits to what government could do, he added, marking perhaps the most explicit admission by a senior Labour figure that some budgets would have to be cut.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's strategy previously for much of this year had been to contrast continued spending, or investment, under Labour versus Conservative cuts.
Conservative leader David Cameron said Brown was still not being straight with people. "He's still sticking to the same old myth that we can spend, spend, spend," he said in a speech in London.
With his party looking increasingly likely to win the next election, Cameron said the country was in a "debt crisis" and promised that under a Conservative government, ministers' pay would be cut and members of parliament would no longer have their meals subsidised.
But the Conservatives too have given scant detail on how they would balance the books if and when they are in power, beyond promises to ringfence certain priority areas.
A poll showed earlier on Tuesday the Conservatives are set to end Labour's 12 years in power, although more than half of voters say they may still switch allegiances.
The ComRes survey for the Independent newspaper put the Conservatives on 40 percent, down two points on last month, with Labour unchanged on 24 percent.
