THERE is no need for the Government's vicious cuts in public sector jobs and services to meet the deficit of around £152 billion, says the Bridgwater and District Trades Union Council.

Trade unionists and Bridgwater residents met in the town earlier this month and concluded "there are plenty of other ways to pay off the budget deficit".

Group members outlined the ways they would recoup the deficit. They said an estimated £130 billion in taxes remain uncollected through tax avoidance by the super-rich.

Stepping up tax collection from these wealthy tax-dodgers would go a long way towards paying the debt, they said.

Spokesman Dave Chapple said: "Also bankers and financiers are once more making huge profits out of the recession.

"These are the same people whose greed and recklessness caused the economic problems.

"Billions of tax-payers' money was used by the previous government to bail them out.

"Now people are being asked to pay over again.

"Let those who caused our economic problems pay to put things right.

"Nationalising the bank and finance industry would raise £90 billion in this year alone."

The group added, a 20 per cent windfall tax on companies currently making huge profits, for example, the energy industry, drugs companies, and the arms industry would raise around £16 billion.

Bringing our troops home from the un-winnable Afghan war would save around £10 billion, the group said.

And scrapping plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system would save another £12 billion.

Mr Chapple said: "Instead, like the previous Labour government, the Con-Dem coalition is determined to prop up the rotten and failing system, and continue to reward profiteers and gamblers, and protect the rich and powerful, while punishing the rest of us."