Following the budget on 22 June, it has now been revealed by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) that George Osborne's budget will result in at least 500,000 public sector jobs and between 600,000 and 700,000 jobs in the private sector being lost by the end of this parliament. 

These reckless cuts present a real risk of derailing the economic recovery and condemning Britain to years of high unemployment and low growth or even tipping the country back into recession.

Ann McKechin MP slammed the Budget plan for mass unemployment, and warned against the fantasy of building a recovery on Tory ministers' prejudices: 

"These are not 'tough choices', but the most cowardly ones which will hit the weakest in our society the hardest.  The Tory-Lib Dem government's plans are about increasing the pain for people in order to pay back debts to wealthy organisations at a faster rate than is necessary. 

"The plans amount to real mass unemployment married to a fantasy recovery, which is based largely on an incredible assumption of record breaking private sector expansion at a time of very low demand." 

The Budget could mean almost zero growth in Scotland as the Fraser of Allander Institute has warned, revising its growth estimates for the Scottish economy down. The report aslo warns that there will be 126,000 job losses in Scotland as a direct result of George Osborne's budget.

The Tories and Lib Dems have made a deliberate choice to punish working people and to persecute those for whom the economy, particularly the private sector economy, persistently fails to provide work which covers the cost of living.

An Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), employment report shows that the Government 'plan' for growth is based largely on the wishful thinking that the private sector will spontaneously expand to help create 2.5 million jobs in the next 5 years.

Independent experts have raised questions on these Government projections for private sector jobs as outlandish and far too optimistic. To get a handle on just how absurd these assumptions are, it is important to remember that in the years after the 1980s recession and the 1990s recession, it took more than 11 years to create 2.5m jobs.

John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, said: "There is not a hope in hell's chance of this happening [the creation of 2.5m new jobs]. There would have to be extraordinarily strong private sector employment growth in a … much less conducive economic environment than it was during the boom."

The report's figures for UK private sector job losses further reveal that contrary to the Tory-Lib Dem government assertion that public sector jobs are a bloated, costly, cause of private sector contraction; public sector jobs are in fact one of the few remaining interventions underpinning demand and the fragile recovery, especially in Scotland.

Ann McKechin MP explained that the planned savage jobs cuts are based on a false choice between employment and deficit reduction:

"Private demand is weak, export demand is weak, and now public demand is being hacked away from the weak base of the economy by the government in the form of huge increases in unemployment as a result of George Osborne’s budget. From where is demand, vital to growth, jobs and recovery now expected to come?

"The Government are planning to cut 1.3 million jobs, but the OBR report asserts that overall employment will rise massively by about 1.2 million from 29.1 million in 2010 to 30.2 million in 2014. This outlandish assumption of a spontaneous private sector recovery, outperforming every recovery in history, creating 2.5 million jobs in a low demand environment is simply not credible.

"The Conservatives and Lib Dems now stand accused of gambling jobs and the welfare of the people on the hopeless hope that a few isolated personal private initiatives and profit seeking businesses will start up or expand in the total absence of true demand in the economy. That gamble is a reckless one, based on fantasy economics. 

"Official figures reveal that the private sector economy and private sector jobs are far more dependent through the recovery on public spending than Ministers wish to think.” 

The impact of the Budget on employment which can be seen by comparing the OBR’s forecast from the week before the Budget, with that released on the day of the Budget.  The changes in those forecasts are almost entirely due to Government policies, with the OBR saying; “the main source of changes is the Budget measures". 

The Treasury have not explained why these figures were revised down – but the answer is that their Budget policy choices have hit growth and employment.

Ann McKechin MP said that the decision to hit jobs hard is a political choice, not a necessity as claimed:

"This budget is a plan for lots of unnecessary pain, but has no plan when it comes to the gain of growth.

"Securing strong, genuine growth which is based on a demand driven recovery is the key precondition for making any real progress on getting the deficit down. Throwing millions on to the dole and costly out-of-work benefits, is the surest way to destroy our capacity both to pay down the deficit and for demand to drive growth.

"The Tories do not have to take punitive measures which hit people hard. They actively choose to take them. They are not only a real risk to the recovery, but hundreds of thousands of people will pay the price for the poor judgment of the Conservatives, fully supported by the Liberal Democrats. It shows the risks they are prepared to take – with other people’s lives.  Many of the people facing the loss of their job will be unlikely to ever get back to work."

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Glasgow North MP, Ann McKechin, today slammed the Government’s plans to scrap support for youth jobs.

Responding to government cuts of £6.2 billion this year, the MP warned that slashing investment in jobs programmes would be devastating for young people in Glasgow and across Scotland.