ITV News Index 5 January 2012

ITV News Index 5 January 2012

Date Published: 05 Jan 2012

Categories: Economy | Politics | Public and communities | UK

Description

ComRes/ ITV News poll shows public patience being tested amid spending cuts and continued weak economy

The ComRes poll, to be broadcast on tonight’s ITV News at Ten, finds that six in ten British adults (59%) agree that if the economy doesn't pick up very soon, “the government should scale back its programme of spending cuts”.

In fact, just one in four (24%) thinks that the spending cuts should continue irrespective of the economy in the short-term. This is against a backdrop of three in four (75%) proclaiming that, in their view, the state of the UK economy has got worse in the last three months.

By way of comparison, this figure has been steadily increasing with just half (48%) of British adults stating that the economy had got worse in the three months to January 2011. It is also the highest since the ITV News/ ComRes tracker began in October 2010.

These figures suggest the Government will be susceptible to increasing public pressure to scale back the cuts if the economy does not improve soon.

Half of the British public (52%) agree that the Government has lost control of the economy, and fewer than two in five (38%) say that they trust David Cameron to see the country through the current economic situation. The one ray of sunshine for the Prime Minister, however, is that he still scores significantly better on this measure than Ed Miliband or Ed Balls.

Responding to being told the finding that 59% of the public would want the Government to reverse the cuts if the economy doesn’t pick up soon, David Cameron told ITV News: “I think that would be the wrong thing to do. If we took the easy path… the effect wouldn’t be the relief that people would seek. The effect would be that international markets would question Britain’s credit worthiness and for our interest rates to start going up to levels that you see in other countries around Europe.”

The latest Index results will be first broadcast on ITV News at Ten on Monday 5th January and more information will be available here: http://www.itv.com/news

ComRes interviewed 2050 GB adults online between 25th and 27th November 2011, and 2052 GB adults between 16th and 18th December 2011. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all GB adults