Alistair Darling has been accused of covering up horrifying figures showing interest payments alone on Britain's vast national debt will soon be twice the defence budget.
The Chancellor told MPs that the Treasury had made 'estimates' of increases to the debt interest bill - which experts predict will hit £70billion to £80billion a year within five years - but refused to release them to Parliament.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain's most respected economic forecaster, has given projections to MPs suggesting the debt interest bill will hit £60billion by 2012/13, £66billion by 2013/14 and £71billion by 2014/15.
Mr Darling also declined to reveal Treasury 'assumptions' showing deep cuts to public spending outside of Labour's protected areas of schools, hospitals and police numbers, despite demands to do so from the Treasury select committee.
The Chancellor caused surprise by saying the Government would speed up its debt reduction plans if growth proved stronger than forecast.
That was seen as a clear signal of steeper tax rises and deeper spending cuts to come if the party wins the next election.
Mr Darling, in an attempt to reassure the international markets a week after his Pre-Budget Report was widely attacked for ducking difficult decisions on spending, said several times in an appearance before MPs that he would cut the deficit faster if his 'cautious' forecasts for an economic recovery were bettered.
'If things are better than I expect - if it looks like growth is taking place more strongly - then we will want to do more to reduce the structural deficit,' the Chancellor said.
Last week Mr Darling said he would reduce the UK's soaring budget deficit to 5.5 per cent of gross domestic product in the 2013 financial year from 12.6 per cent in the current year.
Though it put a spending squeeze off until 2011, the Treasury also said it wanted to eliminate the structural deficit - the black hole that will not go away when the economy bounces back - by 2017-18. The structural deficit is estimated to make up 9.2 per cent of the 12.6 per cent deficit.
Challenged over the forecasts for debt interest and spending, Mr Darling admitted: 'Of course within the Treasury we have estimates.
'The Treasury does have forecasts and estimates for thousands of different bits of information. What we don't do is publish every assumption, every estimate.
'The Government has not yet decided on what expenditure will be in any department. We have not done a spending review.
'I want to strike a balance. There probably are areas where we need to go further. I know full well that you have asked for more information. I'm reflecting on how best we can do that.'
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has written to Mr Darling asking him, 'What are you trying to hide?'
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has written to Mr Darling saying the 'only logical conclusion' was Treasury projections contained information about Government forecasts for departmental spending that he did not wish to be made public.
Mr Osborne pointed out that Treasury documents leaked after the Budget earlier this year suggested spending would be cut by 9.3 per cent in real terms.
Following the Pre-Budget Report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that Mr Darling's decision to protect the NHS and schools spending imply massive cuts in other departments of up to 19 per cent over three years.
Mr Osborne wrote: 'The lack of detail that you provided in the PBR has resulted in an overwhelmingly negative reaction from international investors that puts Britain's economic stability at risk and threatens the recovery.
'So I am writing to ask you to publish immediately the projections for overall departmental spending that your officials agreed to provide to Parliament. What are you trying to hide?'
Conservative MP Michael Fallon, the committee's deputy chair, told the Chancellor: 'The real reason you are not sharing these figures with us is they show you are going to cut public spending.'
He said afterwards: 'They are deliberately concealing firm estimates of debt interest.
'Given the levels of debt, and the fact that we have semi-official estimates from the IFS, it's in the Treasury's own interests to come clean.
'It makes me wonder if their own estimates are in fact even worse.'
Tory MP Andrew Tyrie said: 'The Chancellor went much further than the PBR in saying that he would be prepared to reduce the structural deficit faster if growth allows.
'That's almost certainly what he wanted all along - a quicker reduction in the deficit - but he was thwarted by Gordon Brown. It appears the Chancellor knows that's what the country needs.'
Mr Darling also told the committee his 'super-tax' on bankers' bonuses was not designed to raise large amounts of revenue.
The Chancellor told MPs the 50 per cent levy would 'not actually raise that much' and was meant instead to discourage massive bonus payouts altogether.
He warned some bankers needed to show they 'live on the same planet as the rest of us'.
By James Chapman
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