The opposition parties have given their reaction to the chancellor's spending review.

Oliver Letwin has condemned the chancellor's spending review as "a manifesto for fat government".

The shadow chancellor said Gordon Brown's new plans were a recipe for "more bureaucracy, more targets, more regulation and more tax".

Letwin said Brown, whom he mockingly dubbed the "Wastefinder General", was the only man in Britain who thought waste could be tackled with extra spending.

"When will the chancellor admit that he is spending beyond his means and that this means third term tax raises?," he asked.

He pledged that the Conservatives would cut red tape, and cut the "armies of interferers" down to size.

The chancellor said that the Tory plans would mean swingeing cuts to key departments.

He said the party of Robert Peel was planning cut police, and the party of Winston Churchill was set to cut defence.

The chancellor hit back that waste was "the poll tax and two recessions under the Tories".

Liberal Democrat economic affairs spokesman Vince Cable welcomed some of the chancellor's proposals, but said the statement boiled down to "trimming" the rate of public spending in order to neutralise Tory arguments.

He asked why the problem of waste hadn't been tackled before if it was so easy to make cuts, and argued that the money for public services should be reclaimed from "extravagant" follies such as ID cards.

Gordon Brown said there was "no fiscal discipline at all when it came to spending commitments in the Liberal Party".