国际英语新闻：British chancellor sees budget deficit as "great national challenge"

Osborne's announcement came only hours after one of the world's leading credit ratings agencies, Fitch's, issued a dire warning about the size of the British government's budget deficit.

Fitch's said: "The scale of the UK's fiscal challenge is formidable and warrants a strong medium-term consolidation strategy -- including a faster pace of deficit reduction than set out in the April 2010 Budget."

The April budget was the then ruling Labor party's last budget, and they subsequently lost the following general election in May.

Osborne welcomed Fitch's warning in his speech to the House of Commons as more support for his plans to cut spending. It does, however, represent the level of international concern at Britain's sovereign debt.

Osborne told the Commons that at the G20 finance ministers' summit in South Korea over the weekend, Britain was the nation with the "worst budget deficit" of any attending.

Osborne comes from the right-wing Conservative party, one half of the coalition government. His deputy, chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander comes from the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, and together they launched a treasury document outlining the details of the major review of public spending.

The review will be completed in the autumn, and will cover government spending from the start of the next financial year in April, 2011, to the end of the 2014/15 year.

Osborne invited the public to take part in discussions about the spending cuts, where they should fall and how deep they should be.