Video: Danny Alexander: we are making tough decisions on the economy In its annual fiscal sustainability report, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the additional £17 billion in savings by the year to April 2018 would be needed to get Britain's debt back to pre-crisis levels by 2061. The country's ageing population will increase the budget deficit by £65 billion if nothing is done, the OBR said. This comes on top of George Osborne's £123 billion, seven-year fiscal consolidation programme, which includes hundreds of thousands of public sector job losses, an overhaul of the welfare system and a higher pension age. Chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said the Government's policies were "not just to get to grips with the immediate problem to take the tough decisions now to stabilise our public finances, but also to think for the long term so we don't leave future governments with the sort of mess that we inherited from our predecessors."