David Cameron said the size of the state had got too big. Photograph: David Levene
David Cameron sparked a fresh row on public spending last night when he indicated that the north-east of England and Northern Ireland may face a squeeze under the Tories.
In a move condemned by Labour as "alarming", the Tory leader said the state's share of the economy was too big in some parts of the country.
"In Northern Ireland it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this –that the size of the state has got too big," Cameron told Jeremy Paxman in an interview on BBC1.
"We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including in the north-east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector going.
"Over the next parliament we have got to see a faster growing private sector, we've got to broaden our economic base and we need to have a rebalancing of the economy between the commercial and private sector on the one hand and between the state sector on the other."
Labour was quick to criticise Cameron. Liam Byrne, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said: "Alarmingly for regions outside London [David Cameron] claimed investment in the regions like the north- east was unsustainable, while at the same time saying that tax cuts for millionaires were sustainable.
"With every passing day David Cameron's big society sounds more and more like the same old Tories – tax cuts for the few at the expense of cuts to essential services and to our regions."
Hexham, the North-East, and the UK need a new politics of real democracy, not a Cameron-Thatcher devastation. If you have a job and don't want to lose it don't vote Tory.
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