THE Chancellor has confirmed that 490,000 public sector jobs will be lost over the next four years.
George Osborne said much of the reduction could be achieved through natural turnover, by leaving posts unfilled as they become vacant.
He said there was a turnover rate of around 8% in the public sector.
But Mr Osborne admitted that there will be redundancies and these decisions will be made by individual employers. “That is unavoidable when the country has run out of money,” he said.
The scale of the cuts helped Mr Osborne double his own £3bn target for savings from Whitehall departments to £6bn.
He added: “We feel responsible for every individual who works for the Government, and we will always do everything we can to help them find alternative work.”
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “The biggest tragedy of all is that the spending review is likely to fail on its own terms. These cuts will depress the economy by causing a million job losses and undermining business and consumer confidence. There will be plenty of pain, but little to gain.”
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