The British government has unveiled the country's biggest spending cuts since the end of the Second World War. The government today announced it would cut half a million public sector jobs, raise the retirement age and slash the welfare state. Conservative Finance Minister George Osborne said the cuts will amount to 130 billion pounds over the next four years, which equates to a total spending cut of 19 per cent over the period. Speaking in the House of Commons, Osborne said 490,000 public sector jobs would be cut by 2015. He said the state pension age for men and women will rise to 66 by 2020. He said he would also cut a further 7 billion pounds off the welfare budget on top of the 11 billion pounds of reductions he identified in June. The British government is braced for an uproar but Osborne said he had no choice given the need to cut a record budget deficit of 11 percent of GDP – the highest in the G7 – to around 2 percent in 5 years, a fiscal tightening of some 113 billion pounds, a quarter of which will come from tax rises.