国际英语新闻：Britain's new coalition announces first public spending cuts

Small but highly symbolic savings will be made in areas like travel. Government cars for ministers will be pooled, and they will be expected to walk or use public transport where possible. Any civil servant posts with salaries greater than the prime minister's will have to be reviewed at Cabinet level. First class travel will be highly restricted and organizations which overspend on first-class travel will have the cost deducted from their budgets.

The first flagship policy of the previous Labor government was axed. The Child Trust Fund program, where a lump sum was paid to each child at birth and at age seven for investment, will be rapidly phased out, saving 320 million pounds (460 billion dollars).

Osborne's deputy, the chief secretary to the treasury David Laws, who is a Liberal Democrat, announced the details of the cuts. He said, "If left unchecked, government spending would derail the recovery. Public borrowing is only taxation deferred."

He said this round of cuts was just the first in a long list needed to balance the books. "These are only the first steps we will need to take to put our public finances in shape. The years of public sector plenty are over."

"We promise to cut with care, we will be a progressive government even in these times," he said.

The cuts and their centrality to the government's plans were supported by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, in a BBC TV interview on Sunday.

Clegg, whose party had campaigned against immediate cuts in public spending during the general election, said the situation was now different.

"I don't think anybody could have anticipated then quite how sharply the economic conditions in the eurozone would have deteriorated and that the need to show that we are trying to get to grips with this suddenly became much greater," he said.

"That is why we need to show at a more accelerated timetable than I had initially thought that we are going to get to grips with this great black hole in our public finances.

"The age of plenty, where money could be thrown around in almost carelessness, which is what the outgoing Labour Government has done for some time, now is over," he said.

The next step in the cuts program is the emergency budget from Osborne on June 22, when deeper and more controversial cuts are expected.

The third step in tackling the budget deficit comes in the autumn in a public spending review, when the government will announce cuts spanning three years.

The government has moved with haste for two reasons. First, the events in the eurozone, and particularly in Greece, indicate that sovereign debt is an enormous issue, with international money markets making their unease felt very clearly.

The fragility that this brings is frightening for the government, and it sees an immediate cut in public spending as the best answer for the money markets, which will soon pose the question, "How and when are you going to tackle Britain's sovereign debt?"

The second reason is that the government has a honeymoon period after winning the election when it is still relatively popular. Once the range and depth of the cuts that are going to come is known, that popularity will soon disappear. The government judges it is best to get the cuts started quickly, while it still has some goodwill.