Voters 'Left in Dark' by Parties

None of the top political parties has provided "anything like full details'' on plans to cut the deficit in the next Parliament, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. The IFS said the electorate had been left "somewhat in the dark'' over the size and scale of cuts planned by the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and SNP. The think-tank reached its conclusions after a detailed study of the party manifestos ahead of May's General Election. IFS deputy director Carl Emmerson said: "There are genuinely big differences between the main parties' fiscal plans. "The electorate has a real choice, although it can at best see only the broad outlines of that choice. "Conservative plans involve a significantly larger reduction in borrowing and debt than Labour plans. "But they are predicated on substantial and almost entirely unspecified spending cuts and tax increases. "While Labour has been considerably less clear about its overall fiscal ambition, its stated position appears to be consistent with little in the way of further spending cuts after this year.'' The IFS analysis said the Tories planned the largest reduction in borrowing over the course of the next Parliament. It said the party would require large spending cuts or tax increases to achieve this. Research economist Soumaya Keynes said: "The Conservatives have said they want to eliminate the deficit but provided next to no detail on how they would do it. "They should be forthcoming on the £5 billion of largely unspecified clampdown on tax avoidance, the £10 billion of unspecified cuts to social security spending and, according to our calculations, further real cuts to unprotected departments of around £30 billion.'' Turning to Labour, the IFS said the Opposition had been "considerably more vague'' about how much it wants to borrow. The pledge to produce a surplus but without specifying by when or how much could be consistent with a reduction in borrowing totalling 3.6% of national income. Senior research economist Rowena Crawford said: "Labour's proposed measures might be broadly enough to meet their target for only borrowing to invest. "But this would leave borrowing at £26 billion a year in today's terms. "If Labour wanted to reduce borrowing to a lower level than this they would have to spell out more detail of how they would get there.'' The IFS said the Liberal Democrats had been more transparent about overall fiscal plans to 2017-18, revealing that they are aiming for a tightening more than Labour but less than the Conservatives. The SNP's figures imply the same reduction in borrowing as Labour, the IFS said, although the reduction would be slower. This means the SNP is proposing a slower but longer period of austerity, the think-tank said. The independent analysis came as the main parties clashed over the economy, with Labour accusing the Tories of planning the biggest spending cuts in any of the world's advanced economies and the Conservatives renewing warnings that Britain's economy would suffer from an "SNP/Miliband nightmare''. Chancellor George Osborne told the Daily Telegraph that a Treasury analysis had calculated that the SNP would add £6 billion to Britain's debt interest payments. "There's a real cost for families of that - it's equivalent to just over £350 per family,'' he said. Ed Miliband will respond with a warning of his own that the scale of the cuts planned by the Conservatives for the first half of the new parliament is unprecedented in any three-year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War. He will tell a rally in Leeds that figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that they are greater than anywhere else among the world's 33 advanced economies. Campaigning in the South West before heading to Brussels for an emergency summit to discuss the Mediterranean refugee crisis, Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "fearful'' for the future of investment in English infrastructure if Labour took power with the backing of the Scottish nationalists. "Imagine what it would be like if Alex Salmond was calling the shots,'' he said. "What chance do you think there would be of CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) money staying here in Cornwall for our farmers rather than being taken up to Scotland as the SNP suggests? "What chance do you think there would be of the A303 being dualled, or the extra work on the A30, or the investment in the trains? "What chance would that have of happening when you have got a bunch of politicians who are only interested in one part of our United Kingdom? "So I am very fearful of what could happen if this toxic tie-up between Labour and the SNP takes place.''