Osborne and Alexander ask for coalition post-election cuts plan

Chancellor and Treasury chief secretary urge Conservative and Lib Dem ministers to look for efficiency savings for 2015-16

The chancellor, George Osborne, and the Treasury chief secretary,Danny Alexander, have urged the cabinet to look for further efficiencies and spending cuts in time for a spending review covering 2015-16, the first year after the election.

The spending review will probably be published in early summer. The prime minister's spokesman made no attempt to disguise the fact that government cuts would be difficult but insisted the economy was healing.

He refused to discuss the possibility that final-quarter figures for last year, due to be published on Friday, would show the economy had slipped back into negative growth.

One quarter's negative growth could not represent a triple-dip recession since a recession required two successive quarters of negative growth, he said.

Most forecasters are now expecting negative growth figures in the final quarter.

He acknowledged that the cold weather was disrupting economic activity at the moment, but said there had been no discussion of the weather's potential impact on growth this quarter.

The 2015-16 departmental spending figures will be politically controversial since they will represent a joint Liberal Democrat-Conservative departmental spending plan for the first year after the general election. Yet the two parties are to fight the next election as entirely independent parties.

Budgets for international development, education and health remain protected, although the Office for National Statistics says health spending has effectively dropped.

Labour will at some point have to say if it accepts the departmental spending totals for 2015-16, or indeed the wider spending envelope after 2015-16.

Osborne urged cabinet members to engage with the efficiency and reform group at the Treasury by looking for ways to reform public services and find ways of working jointly to save cash.

The prime minister's spokesman said David Cameron and the chancellor, at the time of the autumn statement, made it clear that there would be a further squeeze on public spending. He said: "There is no flinching that very difficult decisions will have to be taken."

Speaking on the day that new borrowing figures were published he added that the aim was to "secure more for less"