‘Welfare for wealthy’ has to end, says senior Tory

Billions of pounds of "welfare for the wealthy" should be abolished, a senior Conservative MP argued today.

David Davis, the former chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, proposed spending cuts which would hit many traditional Tory supporters. They include ending child benefit for the better-off and replacing winter fuel payments and free TV licences for the elderly with help for poorer pensioners.

Mr Davis also said that David Cameron should scale back the upgrade of the Trident nuclear deterrent if the Tories win power and proposed a public sector pay and recruitment freeze which would cancel senior civil servants' bonuses and cut Cabinet ministers' £141,866 salaries and MPs' expenses.

The former shadow home secretary, who resigned to campaign on civil liberty issues, laid out the Tory Right's views on the scale of cutbacks needed to deal with Britain's borrowing binge, expected to be £175 billion this year.

Writing in the Financial Times, he said: "The choice we face is not between Labour growth in public services and Tory cuts'. It is between taking a grip of the public finances and watching our people's economic prospects, and our ability to afford decent public services, slowly dribble away."