Jo Johnson:  Britain took a decisive step back from the brink. We have confronted the bills from a decade of debt and started to rebuild, putting our public services and the welfare state on a sustainable footing – for the long term.

The cuts announced in the Spending Review are driven not by ideology but by necessity. Labour left this country in economic meltdown, with the largest deficit in our peacetime history. We are spending £120 million every single day just to pay off the interest on Labour's debt. 

This Government can be proud of the three areas spared the axe – ring-fenced NHS spending, schools budgets and overseas aid.  Health, because the NHS is our nation's most prized institution and embodies the idea of fairness in our society – free at point of use for all. 

Schools, because children are this nation's future and today's education is tomorrow's prosperity.  And overseas aid, because we recognise that helping poverty- and conflict-ridden states is profoundly in our own national interest. 

Other departments have suffered more because of Labour's mismanagement of the economy. But because of our welfare reforms, the average saving in departmental budgets will actually be lower than Labour planned in the March Budget.

Ed Miliband and Alan Johnson were at the heart of the Labour Government that created this mess and they have no credible plan to clean it up. They are irresponsibly opposing almost every measure we are introducing to deal with the deficit.

To back down now and abandon our plans would be the road back to economic ruin. We will stick to the course. We will secure our country's stability. It will be a tough period, no doubt, but it will create a much stronger Britain for the years ahead.