David Cameron sparked a fresh row on public spending last night when he indicated that the north-east of England and Northern Ireland may face a squeeze under the Tories. In a move condemned by Labour as "alarming", the Tory leader said the state's share of the economy was too big in some parts of the country.
"In Northern Ireland it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this –that the size of the state has got too big," Cameron told Jeremy Paxman in an interview on BBC1. We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including in the north-east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector going. Over the next parliament we have got to see a faster growing private sector, we've got to broaden our economic base and we need to have a rebalancing of the economy between the commercial and private sector on the one hand and between the state sector on the other."
Read the full Guardian article here.
