Chancellor George Osborne: £25bn more in cuts needed

Osbourne suggested cutting housing benefits for under 25s and restricting council housing for those who earn over £65,000 a year.

14:42 06 January 2014

Chancellor George Osborne has warned that there will be another £25bn needed in spending cuts after the next election.

Saying that the job was ‘not even half done’, he confirmed that more austerity lay ahead.

Osborne made the suggestion of cutting housing benefits for those who are under 25 and restricting council housing for those who are earning over £65,000 a year. This suggestion was not welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who said that targeting the working age is “extreme… unrealistic and unfair.”

In his speech, the chancellor said: "We've got to make more cuts. That's why 2014 is the year of hard truths - the year when Britain faces a choice.

"Do we say 'the worst is over, back we go to our bad habits of borrowing and spending and living beyond our means and let the next generation pay the bill'?

"Or do we say to ourselves 'yes, because of our plan, things are getting better - but there is still a long way to go and there are big, underlying problems we have to fix in our economy'?"