Budget 'will be day of reckoning'

Chancellor Alistair Darling will be forced to lay bare the "economic carnage" of the past decade when he makes his Budget statement on Wednesday, the Tories claim.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne cast the financial update as a "day of reckoning" for Labour, predicting the Treasury would forecast the longest recession since 1945.

He said he expected the economy to be showing signs of growth by the end of 2009, but added that the downturn had been so severe it would be "fairly dramatic" if it was not.

"It will be a day of reckoning and I think you are going to see the Chancellor forecast the longest recession that Britain has had since the Second World War," he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1.

"We are already (seeing) the fastest rise in unemployment on record and I think we will see the worst public finances not just in the world but also since the Second World War.

"So it is a truly dramatic moment when the economic carnage of the last 10 years is laid bare."

Mr Osborne went on that it would be premature to talk of the "green shoots" of economic recovery already, with unemployment still rising and more companies struggling to stay afloat.

But he went on: "I think it's true to say the rate of decline is slowing.

"In other words we are not falling as fast as we were a couple of months ago, and I would expect by the end of the year we would see some signs of economic growth.

"By then we will already have been through the longest recession since the War, so if we are not seeing some signs of growth by the end of this year, that would be fairly dramatic."