STUART Fegan, senior organiser for the GMB union’s South West Area Office described the spending review as a huge gamble.

He said: "This CSR is the biggest economic gamble with our future that we’ve ever seen.

"The South-West is particularly reliant on public sector employment and we also have some of the most economically deprived areas which rely on services provided by the public sector.

“This CSR is ideologically driven and not by necessity.

"It doesn’t appear to be a fair budget but will hit the poorest hardest.

“Everyone knows that the bankers created this economic situation and yet the Government seems to have found it easiest to focus on the poorest and the most vulnerable, and harder to target the very rich and the bankers.

“It would have been a just and fair budget if it had targeted the rich who can bear the cuts better than the poor.

“We are up for hard times ahead.”