Schools Secretary Ed Balls became the first minister to provide details of how he intends to make inroads into Britain's record deficit, telling the Sunday Times he would target management jobs and teachers' pay.
Balls's comments came days after Prime Minister Gordon Brown, under pressure to trim a deficit that is forecast to double to about 12 percent of gross domestic product this year, conceded he would have to cut spending.
Balls said he had targeted 2 billion pounds ($3.3 billion) worth of savings. That will put added pressure on cabinet colleagues, who have been approached by Finance Minister Alistair Darling for one-to-one meetings to identify where sacrifices could be made.
Meanwhile, the war of words between the main political parties over how to handle the economy intensified on Sunday when the main opposition Conservatives accused Labour of planning a hidden tax bombshell.
Balls said savings could be made by restraining public sector pay, including in education, and cutting jobs among bureaucrats and senior school staff such as head teachers, deputies, assistant heads and heads of departments.
Teachers' jobs would remain safe and class size numbers would not increase, he told the Sunday Times. "It is going to be tougher on spending over the next few years," he said. The squeeze would begin after 2011. The government has provided few details on where it will make public spending cuts.
Brown has said up to 500 million pounds would be cut from the civil service budget and that "vital frontline" services would not be affected, without defining what those services were, though that was taken to mean health and education.
TAX PLANS:
The Conservatives, widely expected to win the next election, have said cuts would have to be made, but their finance spokesman George Osborne has only identified health and international development spending for ring-fencing.
Osborne said leaked Treasury documents showed Labour was planning to raise another 50 billion pounds a year in income tax by 2013-14. This could add an extra 2,770 pounds a year to the average family's bill by the end of the next parliament. "What we've done is shown the figures that the Treasury didn't want to show you," Osborne told Sky TV.
"What we see for the first time is the government confirming in black and white ... that they are planning or anticipating a 30 percent increase in income tax receipts."
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