It’s taken less than three weeks for the Con-Lib coalition government to get its first scandal… except that this one was probably a hangover from the scandals of last summer.

Liberal Democrat MP David Laws had been forced to quit his post as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, working with Chancellor George Osborne, for allegedly failing to declare claims of  around £40,000 in expenses to pay rent on a flat for his partner. He apologised and said he would pay back the money. His colleague, currently Scottish Secretary Danny Alexander, has been appointed to replace him.

I wonder how many column inches were written about Mr Laws’ misdemeanors compared with the millions of column inches written on the claims of minor Labour ministers in the last parliament. A lot of attention has now been focused at the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper which first broke the parliamentary expenses scandal, and which published the Laws story.

However, I suspect the British people may not hear many more revelations on the coalition’s alleged wrongdoings for a while, considering the fact that according to the majority of the media, the country is still recovering from the fact that Labour are no longer in power.

The new Chancellor George Osborne this week announced immediate savings of £6billion. The figure may seem large, but when a country has a massive budget deficit it isn’t that much. Except that once again, it will be the ‘ordinary people’ in the street who will suffer.

Some of the savings include:

• The abolition of the Child Trust Fund.
• Reduction in the number of university places.
• Local councils must reduce their overall budgets.
• Reduction in grants to the devolved national assemblies.
• Civil Service recruitment will be frozen.
• Government ministers to be forced to use public transport.
• Axing some quangoes  and reducing the cost of others.

The response to the cuts were mixed. The Labour opposition couldn’t say much because they have other pressing issues on their mind. However, the real test will come when the emergency budget is revealed next month. Will it break the coalition? Time will tell.