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I've been up for quite a few hours and I'm sitting here in the Deputy Prime Minister's Office
just reading some notes before cabinet.
It is going to be a very busy day.
We've got Cabinet in a few moments
where we're briefing colleagues on the content of the Spending Review
and then to the House of Commons where the Chancellor will make the Statement
and then for me, a round for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening
of media interviews explaining to the British people
the decisions we've made, the choices we've made
how we're going about reducing the deficit which is causing such big problems for our economy.
It's a very important day for the country
and I think people want to genuinely want to know and understand
the decisions we've made, the judgements we've made,
why we've made those decisions and what the consequences are.
So I think more than anything it's a day of explanation -
it's not a day for having big political rows,
it's a day for setting out, in a very clear way
the judgements that we've made and why it is that we think these judgements are the right ones
to support prosperity for the future.
When we came into office we found a country on the brink of bankruptcy
and we need to stabilise our public finances
and we need to sort out the deficit if we are going to have a firm platform for growth and prosperity in the future.
This means some very difficult decisions
but they are decisions based on the principles of fairness,
on the need to support long term economic growth and on fundamental reform of our public services
so we get better value for the public money we do have left to spend.
Since we last met at half past seven this morning,
George and I have briefed the Cabinet about the Spending Review…
George delivered his Statement to the Commons and that went very well
and I've been spending the rest of the day in an endless round of media interviews
trying to explain the choices we've made in the Spending Review
and explain why it is that it's so necessary to be making the changes to public spending that we're announcing today
and just trying to give people at home who are of course genuinely interested
to see what we've decided and concerned about the impact on them
to try and give people a sense of why we've made the decisions that we have.
[extracts from media interviews]
Just now come back to the office
and these are the settlement letters as they are called, the letters that go to Departments
to tell them precisely the allocations that we have given to them
that are described in the Spending Review document and that has to be done tonight.
I'm off to do Channel Four News and Newsnight in a wee while.
I think today's gone well in the sense that we have presented what we've decided,
we've communicated a message which is a very difficult one
in the sense that these are not changes that any of us would want to make,
I didn't come into politics to cut public spending
but it is what needs to be done
and I think we've managed to communicate that
and explain to people some of the big choices we've made
in terms of trying to prioritise education and health and investment in infrastructure
over waste and central government expenditure
and changes to the welfare system
so I think we've explained that and obviously people will want to know more detail
and Departments will be spelling that out over the coming weeks and months
but in terms of trying get across to people
some very, very difficult decisions that are going to have a real impact on people's lives
I think that we have started that process effectively.
My last engagement for the day is a live interview
on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman at half past ten
and then after that I get to go home and go to bed…
quite rightly those encounters are testing ones
because it's quite right that journalists and the media should be really scrutinising what we're doing
and trying explain it effectively to their readers and viewers
and I'm looking forward to having a chance to do that on BBC2 later.