2 September 2010 Last updated at 17:51

Spending Review: What would you cut?

Chancellor George Osborne is due to deliver his Spending Review on Wednesday 20 October, after the government set itself cutting the budget deficit as a priority.

The June 2010 Budget said that departmental spending would have to be cut by £50bn a year by 2014-15, compared with 2010-11 levels.

See if you can make those cuts in the deficit by using the sliders below to trim spending in various departments. Examples are provided for illustration only. Concentrate on 'amount saved' to meet the target and try to reach £50bn.

We don't know where the real cuts will fall yet, so the 'equivalent to' column does not indicate where the government will actually make cuts. Not all the savings will come from department spending. For example, the government has ring fenced health spending and the international aid budget. (Below the graphic are details of how we did this.)

Notes

1. This tool is a rough and ready calculator based on a few illustrative examples. It doesn't take into account the subtleties of budget cuts such as knock-on effects on employment, or how, for example, a combination of cuts to back office and front line operations might meet a particular target. For full coverage of the Spending Review see our special report here.

2. The figures come from the last government's March 2010 budget

3. How it works: we've taken each spending area budget, worked out the value of a single percentage point, ie, 1/100th of that budget, then, using official figures, given an example that is representative of spending in that area. For example, the defence budget is £40bn. One percentage point equivalent is £400m, which is equal to the annual cost of employing 8,723 average lowest ranked service men and women across the army, RAF, Navy and Marines.

4. See here for more detail on how we made the calculations.

* Other includes spending on general government expenditure, recreation, culture, religion, agriculture, and industry.

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