The British government today rejected calls by the European Commission for it to do more to cut its ballooning budget deficit in the medium term, saying such action would damage public services.
'We think the EU has got the judgement wrong,' Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne said.
'We think the plan that they've set out would require us to take something like £20 billion sterling more out of the economy by 2014-15 and we think that would do irreparable damage to public services or to taxpayers,' he said.
Mr Byrne was responding to a draft from the EU executive, which said Britain's fiscal programme failed to guarantee it would meet an EU deadline of 2014-15 for cutting the deficit to below the bloc's cap of 3% of economic output.
Britain's plan envisages cutting the gap to 4.7% of gross domestic product in the fiscal year 2014-15 from 12.1% planned for 2010-2011. That means it will fail to meet a deadline given by EU finance ministers late last year.
