Clegg: £6bn cuts will be 'painful'

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has bitterly attacked the former Labour government of Gordon Brown, accusing it of making spending pledges that it knew it could not possibly honour.

As Chancellor George Osborne prepared to announce the new coalition Government's first £6 billion in spending cuts, Mr Clegg warned that the "age of plenty" was over and a period of painful retrenchment was beginning.

The Liberal Democrat leader said the coalition partners would need to hold their nerve as they took the unpopular decisions necessary to deal with the "great black hole" in the public finances left by Labour.

Mr Clegg said on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show: "The outgoing Labour government was just throwing around money like there was no tomorrow, probably knowing that they were going to lose the election, making extraordinary commitments left, right and centre, many of which they knew they couldn't honour.

"So not only are we going to have to deal with cuts, we are also going to have to actually deal with some of the pledges that the government made in the past which they didn't even provide budgets for.

"The age of plenty where money could be thrown around in almost carelessness, which is what the outgoing Labour government has done of some time, now is over. Yes, it is over.

"There are going to be difficult decisions, they are going to be unpopular decisions, they are going to be controversial, we are going to have to hold our nerve."