THE GOVERNMENT’S plan to push through “the largest cuts plans in living memory” will lead to the loss of an additional 2,000 jobs in Swindon, a senior Labour MP has claimed.

David Miliband, pictured, shadow foreign secretary and Labour leadership candidate, told the Advertiser that the coalition’s emergency Budget in June, represented a severe threat to public sector jobs across the county.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that the impact of the Budget will be to cost 610,000 public sector jobs nationally over the next six years – although the Government claims the losses will be made up by new jobs in the private sector.

Figures provided by Mr Miliband show that if the job losses were spread evenly across the country then Wiltshire would be in line to lose an additional 6,172 posts – including 1,845 in Swindon.

Mr Miliband, who is coming to Swindon later this month to visit the Punjabi Community Centre, said: “By presenting the case for radical cuts as unavoidable, committing to the largest cuts plans in living memory and leading Europe in austerity measures, the coalition has gone for broke.

“The immediate effect of the budget will be to force over 600,000 workers into unemployment. With recent surveys suggesting rapidly worsening business confidence with no evidence of an emerging hiring spree, their prospects of finding work in the private sector are bleak.”

Mr Miliband added: “The Tories haven’t learnt the lessons of the 1980s when whole communities were destroyed by rising unemployment that the Tory Government presided over. We need to reduce the deficit in a way that promotes jobs, rather than destroying them.”

The frontrunner for the Labour leadership continued: “A succession of people from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) onwards are arguing that the budget is not just prejudicing growth next year and the year after, but actually prejudicing the future of the British economy. Unless you can cut unemployment you can’t cut the deficit.”

He added that Labour’s plan to halve the deficit in four years was a “serious plan” that would reduce public debt without endangering economic recovery.

Setting out his campaign message, he said Labour needed to listen and understand “why we got a kicking, because that’s the first step to persuading people you’re serious about not getting a kicking next time”.

The Treasury was unable to provide a comment on Friday.