Thinking Aloud: Was George Osborne's Spending Review fair?

Chancellor George Osborne has announced a further £11.5billion in cuts on Government spending. Has the time now come for the Government to rethink its austerity approach? And are the cuts fair? These are the big issues debated in the first instalment of our new show 'Thinking Aloud'.

Joey Jones of Sky News, along with his guests Owen Jones of The Independent and Harry Cole of The Spectator, examine yesterday's Spending Review announcement.

Mr Osborne insists the review - which imposes swingeing cuts on Government spending, imposes a welfare cap to limit social security spending and introduces new requirements on people claiming benefits - was taking Britain "from rescue to recovery".

He warned that a failure to follow the economic plan set out in the review would lead to a "real economic crisis" for Britain, with soaring unemployment, business failures and rising mortgage interest rates.

[Thinking Aloud: Spending Review 2013 at a glance]

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls argued this morning that it was important to find ways of saving money, but in a fair way.

He said: "The reality is that, for all the Government's nasty divisive rhetoric on welfare and social security, they've actually been very bad at controlling the bills. I would have a tougher approach but also a fairer approach at getting young people back into work."

But Mr Osborne denied that his package placed the greatest burden on the poorest in society.

He said: "Distributional impact (analysis) of the entire consolidation shows that it is the richest in society who have lost the most proportionately."