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EXCLUSIVE: My anguish over Sheffield's £105m cuts, says Clegg
NICK Clegg today admitted the bombshell decision to scrap or suspend £105 million of projects in Sheffield had been a 'very difficult thing for me personally''.
Speaking exclusively to The Star, the Hallam MP and Deputy Prime Minister said he wished the Government had not been forced to make the unpopular cuts.
"I've been turning this over in my mind over and over again, especially in the last 24 hours but also for a long time before then," he said.
But in a bid to get back on the front-foot after a wave of criticism, Mr Clegg accused Labour MPs of 'moral bankruptcy' - and said the last government had 'no idea' how it would pay for its pre-election spending splurge, which included an 80m loan for steelmaker Sheffield Forgemasters.
Mr Clegg has faced a furious backlash after the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government cancelled the Forgemasters loan and axed a 13 million project to turn disused steel mills into a business park.
A 12 million funding package for the new city centre Sevenstone retail scheme was also suspended.
Opposition MPs accused Mr Clegg of failing to stand up for his home city with one - Rotherham Labour MP Denis MacShane - claiming: "He will never be welcome in Sheffield or South Yorkshire again."
But Mr Clegg today launched a fightback, saying: "The betrayal is a Labour government making promises to curry favour with people just before the election when they knew those promises couldn't be honoured.
"I'm really very angry that people in Sheffield had their hopes raised when Gordon Brown was parading through Forgemasters two days before the General Election.
"People had their hopes raised in the belief the money that had been promised them from Labour would arrive.
"Labour made those promises knowing they had no idea how to pay for them."
He said there remains "different avenues" for Forgemasters to explore as it attempts to expand its business and said the Government has offered "a huge amount of support and advice, information, guidance" about how the firm can raise money from private sources.
He also stressed the plans to regenerate Sheffield city centre have not been ditched altogether.
"Let's keep it in perspective. The Sevenstone retail scheme is not being cancelled, it is being looked at again," he said.
But admitting the cuts had been tough for him personally, Mr Clegg said: "Let me be clear, I wish this was not the decision which this government had to take - not as Deputy Prime Minister but as MP for Sheffield Hallam.
"I was keeping a very, very close eye on this.
"It would have been lovely to come into government when there was a huge amount of money around that we could promise left, right and centre, but instead we find that the Labour government basically emptied the safe and took the key with them before they left."
The Deputy Prime Minister went on to repeat his pledge that the coalition will look to protect regions heavily dependent on state sector jobs, like South Yorkshire.
He said: "I'm absolutely determined to play my role as a constituency MP but also speaking as Deputy Prime Minister I will be very clear: we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s.
"We are going to take explicit measures, as you will see announced in the coming weeks, to make sure those parts of the country that are dependent on government money are not disproportionately hit in the difficult decisions we are going take."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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