Osborne unveils new spending cuts

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne has unveiled plans to cut welfare spending and increase some taxes.

The chancellor scrapped student grants, cut housing benefit for under-21s and froze working age benefits.

"Britain still spends too much, borrows too much... You only have to look at the crisis unfolding in Greece as I speak, to realize that if a country’s not in control of its borrowing, the borrowing takes control of the country," Osborne told parliament on Wednesday.

The British government will cut spending on welfare by £12 billion as part of a fresh austerity plan.

Many have been critical of this budget as it appears to cut from those who are most vulnerable in the UK.

Harriet Harman the deputy Labour leader said, “The Chancellor is said to be liberated without the ties of coalition holding him back but what we have heard today suggests his rhetoric is liberated from reality. A Budget for working people? How can you make that claim when you are making working people worse off.”

"When you actually look at this more in the totality, in the round this really been a budget to hit those in work, particularly those on low pay. [George Osborne’s] doing his usual political trick, lots of headlines - he’s a headline chancellor - but when you take away the spin, actually he’s taking billions and billions away from the tax credits that people need in work. A work penalty has been introduced into the tax credit system, and he’s done it in a number of different way...First of all, he’s halved the level at which people can be awarded the full amount of tax credit, going from £6,000 to £3,000. So effectively, for those people on tax credits, it’s a bit like halving the personal allowance for them. And then he’s taking it away at a much faster rate. And there’s no way that the increases in the minimum wage, much as though we welcome some of those, can keep pace with the hit that is going hurt those on the lowest pay. So, for all the slogans about helping working people, he is definitely not doing that," Chris Leslie, the shadow chancellor was quoted as saying by the British media.

Following Osborne’s speech at the parliament, protesters took to the streets in London to show their anger at the government’s planned cuts to welfare.

Similar protests have been held across the UK over the past several months.

Back on June 20, tens of thousands of anti-austerity protesters rallied in the streets of London.

People from different walks of life including firefighters, teachers and medical workers joined the demonstration, seen as the largest anti-austerity protest in London since Conservatives won the May 7 parliamentary elections.

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