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  Happy New Year from the Chancellor: George Osborne targets working-age poor again as he insists Britain must make £25bn more welfare cuts in 2014
  
  Half the cuts to come from the welfare budget
  
  George Osborne was accused of targeting the poor and vulnerable and sparing the rich as he outlined £25bn of new spending cuts, with half of them coming from the welfare budget.
  
  The Chancellor kicked off the political year with a bleak warning that the job of clearing the deficit is "not even half done." But his suggestion of £12bn of welfare cuts in the two years after the 2015 election provoked an angry backlash from the Liberal Democrats and pressure groups.
  
  Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, accused Mr Osborne of launching an "unrealistic, unfair" attack on the poor while demanding no sacrifices from the wealthy. He told his monthly press conference: "You've got a Conservative Party now who are driven, it seems to me, by two very clear ideological impulses. One is to remorselessly pare back the state - for ideological reasons. Secondly - and I think they are making a monumental mistake in doing so - they say the only section in society which will bear the burden of further fiscal consolidation are the working-age poor."
  
  Mr Clegg added: "You've got an agenda on the right which appears to believe in cuts for cuts' sake, and an agenda on the left which believes in spending for spending's sake."
  
  Full story Independent.

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