Backseat budget

When on Wednesday George Osborne delivers the first Tory budget in nearly two decades, he does so with an economy utterly transformed from the wreck left by Gordon Brown.

He has stuck with his recovery plan in spite of unremitting shroud-waving by the BBC, the sneers of the unlamented Ed Balls and his Lib-Dem partners’ millstone around his neck.

This could not have been achieved without the toil and financial sacrifice of working people and it is time for him to deliver radical tax cuts to reward their fantastic contribution.

Yet to be remembered as a reforming Chancellor he must slash public spending because, for all the austerity rhetoric, it will be £745 billion this year – 10 per cent more than in 2010.

Iain Duncan Smith’s attack on Britain’s dependency culture has managed to get many of our idle into work but the welfare bill is still £220bn and much remains to be done.

Incapacity benefit must be limited to the unfit, housing benefit reined in, a regional welfare cap introduced and our vast public sector wage bill made to reflect regional cost of living.

(Dr) John Cameron,

Howard Place

St Andrews