Britain set for crunch recession budget

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LONDON, April 19 (AFP): Britain will unveil a recession- fighting budget this week, seen as vital for Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he struggles to boost his flagging fortunes ahead of a likely election next year.
Finance minister Alistair Darling will deliver the government's 2009/2010 taxation and spending plans before parliament Wednesday amid a global financial crisis which has dragged the world into a sharp economic downturn.
Britain, in its first recession since 1991, has been hit hard and is battling soaring unemployment and public debt, plus a slumping property market and tax revenues.
Brown, meanwhile, will be hoping it can turn the page on a string of recent political scandals, including this month's resignation of a top adviser over a planned smear campaign against the main opposition Conservative Party.
Calling it "one of the most important budgets since the Second World War", the Daily Telegraph newspaper said in an editorial Saturday: "We need a safe budget to restore trust in politics".
The government's options look limited, though-experts warn that tax cuts or public spending increases would be hard to justify because of stretched public finances in the current dire economic climate.
The public purse has been stretched by a series of costly bailouts in which the government has rescued some of the country's biggest banks from the international credit crunch.
Darling, whose official title is Chancellor of the Exchequer, is also expected to rip up his economic growth projections Wednesday in light of a deepening recession which began in the second half of 2008.
Andrew Oswald, economics professor at Warwick University, predicted the chancellor would attempt to stimulate growth, particularly with measures aimed at youth unemployment.