The Liberal Democrats have been more transparent about their overall fiscal plans through to 2017–18 and are aiming for a tightening that is larger than Labour’s but smaller than the Conservatives’, at 3.9% of national income.
As the Liberal Democrats have acknowledged in their manifesto, their plans would require £12 billion of cuts to unprotected departments. Their plans are predicated on two other optimistic claims. First, the vast majority of their planned cut to social security spending is to come from their ambition to reduce fraud and error in the system and to get better at helping benefit recipients back into work. Second, they wish to raise £10 billion by the end of the parliament from largely unspecified and highly uncertain measures to reduce tax avoidance and evasion. This is twice as much as the Conservatives, and a third more than Labour, expect to raise from such measures.