Pub industry bosses back government's spending cuts
Michael Turner, chairman of London brewer Fuller, Smith & Turner, has backed calls for the government not to waver in its determination to reduce the country's debt.
Writing to the Daily Telegraph, Turner, along with bosses of 34 other companies including Paul Walsh of drinks giant Diageo and Whitbread's Anthony Hapgood, said watering down the cuts being proposed by the government would be a mistake and the result of delaying action to reduce the deficit would be nearly £100bn of further debt by 2015, meaning deeper cuts or more tax rises would have to follow to pay for the extra debt interest.
"The cost of delay could be even greater than this," the group wrote. "As recent events in some European countries have deomnstrated, if the markets lose faith in Britain, interest rates will rise for all of us."
Calling on the Chancellor to hold his nerve, the business leaders said there was no reason to think the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget would undermine the recovery and that the private sector could take up the slack.
"The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.
"So, each writing in our personal capacity, we would encourage [Chancellor of the Exchequer] George Osborne and the government to press ahead with his plans to reduce the deficit. In the long run it will deliver a healthier and more stable economy."
Osborne is to present his spending review plans to Parliament this Wednesday, with hundreds of millions of pounds expected to be carved out of the public sector and thousands of jobs likely to go as a result.
