Nick Clegg blasts think tank for using Treasury's 'dessicated' measures of fairness

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has issued a fierce response to claims by a respected economic think tank that the government's spending cuts would be unfair on Britain's poorest citizens.

Mr Clegg said the government "fundamentally" disagreed with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and described its measure of fairness as "a complete nonsense".

The IFS had insisted 81 billion of cuts unveiled by Chancellor George Osborne on Wednesday would hit the poorest harder than most of the better off.

Its intervention undermined the government's efforts to present the spending review as fair, a test that ministers have been at pains to stress that the plans meet.

In a newspaper interview yesterday, Mr Clegg said the IFS had "airbrushed" out many of the aspects of state provision upon which poorer people depended. "We just fundamentally disagree with the IFS," he said.

"It goes back to a culture of how you measure fairness that took root under Gordon Brown's time, where fairness was seen through one prism and one prism only which was the tax and benefits system.

"It is a complete nonsense to apply that measure, which is a slightly desiccated Treasury measure. People do not live only on the basis of the benefits they receive.

"They also depend on public services, such as childcare and social care.

"All of those things have been airbrushed out of the picture by the IFS."

He insisted that "the richest are paying the most", adding: "Those who say otherwise are not being very straight with people and frankly they are frightening people."

Mr Osborne's cuts package was backed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Angel Gurria, its secretary general, said: "Budgetary consolidation is never easyb but the timing and scope of the measures balance concerns for near-term growth with the need to stop the snowballing of debt.

"The measures are tough, necessary and courageous."