Tories are not being honest on the level of cuts to social care and policing, warn Labour

The shadow Chancellor will launch Labour’s strongest attack on the Tories’ plans as he launches a campaign to spell out the impact of 'more Tory austerity'

Ed Balls, the shadow Chancellor, will launch Labour’s strongest attack on the Tories’ plans in a speech in London as he launches a campaign to spell out the impact of “more Tory austerity.” (Getty)

Deeper cuts to social care and policing than the Conservatives have admitted will be implemented if they win the election, Labour will claim today.

A new analysis by Labour of Tory spending plans suggests the cuts would be more than twice as deep as George Osborne has disclosed, and that less than half the cuts have been implemented in the current five-year parliament.

Ed Balls, the shadow Chancellor, will launch Labour’s strongest attack on the Tories’ plans in a speech in London as he launches a campaign to spell out the impact of “more Tory austerity.”

It will be seen as a pre-emptive strike before the Budget on March 18, when Mr Osborne is expected to announce a further rise in the personal tax allowance. It is already due to increase from £10,000 to £10,600 next month. This week the Chancellor will discuss with the Liberal Democrats a plan to raise the figure higher next month, to £10,800 or even more. That would be presented as a tax cut for 27m taxpayers.

Mr Osborne is also said to be planning to announce a “Google tax” of 25 per cent on multinationals such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, which are accused of diverting profits made in the UK to low-tax countries to escape millions in tax.

Labour’s analysis claims that Tory plans to reduce public spending as a share of GDP to 1930s levels would mean cuts to social care budgets that were the equivalent of 260,000 fewer old people receiving care – one third of those receiving care. It warns that a huge reduction in the Home Office budget would be the equivalent of cutting 29,900 police officers and 6,700 police community support officers.

Mr Balls will condemn “extreme and risky” Tory plans as “an ideological second-term project to shrink the state which goes far beyond the necessary task of deficit reduction.”

With Labour under pressure from the Greens and Scottish National Party for supporting austerity measures, Mr Balls will argue: “Some other parties say we do not need to get the deficit down. Labour has a better, fairer and more balanced plan which means we are the centre-ground party in British politics today.”

The shadow Chancellor will argue: “We are not even half way through the cuts the Tories are planning. Spending cuts which are more extreme than in this parliament, the most extreme in post-war history and the most extreme internationally.”

Nick Clegg will today unveil Liberal Democrat plans to make the UK the largest economy in Europe by 2035, by ring-fencing the science budget and doubling government spending on innovation to more than £1bn by 2020-21.