Job cuts could cost taxpayer £8 billion

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Shadow chancellor Alan Johnson has warned that George Osborne’s job cut plans could cost the taxpayer £8bn, based on the redundancy bill for the Ministry of Justice, where 14,000 staff are set to lose their jobs at a cost of £230m. Johnson said:

“If the taxpayer has to foot a comparable redundancy bill for the 490,000 jobs that are to go across the public sector, George Osborne has lined them up for an £8bn hit. That is the price of going too far and too fast. On a timetable determined by the date of next election, not the economic cycle.”

As Johnson himself said yesterday – the announcements from the CSR are “unravelling”…