U.K. Treasury Said to Ask Ministers to Find 10% Cuts

U.K. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander wrote to most Cabinet ministers asking them to identify cuts of a further 10 percent of their departmental budgets in the year starting April 2015, a government official said.

The move is part of a process to identify how the government will find the 11.5 billion pounds ($17.4 billion) it has pledged to cut from spending in that year, according to the official, who declined to be identified because the letter is confidential. Ministers were asked to plan for about 3 billion pounds more of reductions than are needed, the official said.