Britain wants law to guarantee budget surplus

Britain's finance minister George Osborne will use next month's post-election budget to push ahead with new laws to force governments to run a surplus.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne will present a budget on July 8 to implement his centre-right Conservative Party's campaign promises of spending cuts after a surprise election win in May.

"In normal times, governments of the left as well as the right should run a budget surplus to bear down on debt and prepare for an uncertain future," Osborne was to say in a speech to business leaders Wednesday, according to excerpts published by the Treasury.

"In the budget we will bring forward this strong new fiscal framework to entrench this permanent commitment to that surplus, and the budget responsibility it represents," Osborne will add in his annual Mansion House speech -- given annually by the chancellor to the City of London financial centre.

The proposal will face a vote in parliament's lower House of Commons, and will be assessed by the government's semi-independent fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

In future, Osborne wants ministers to ensure that tax revenues exceed public spending, so long as the economy is judged by the OBR to be operating "normally" and not in recession.

Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives clinched an absolute majority in the May 7 general election, ending five years of coalition government with the centre-ground Liberal Democrats and beating the left-leaning opposition Labour party.

The coalition administration had already promised that the public purse would reach a surplus by the 2018/2019 financial year.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which rose to power in 2010, unleashed billions of pounds of cuts to state spending to bring down a record deficit inherited from the previous Labour government.