Spending cuts before tax rises?

Following the News of the World's story about Tory tax policy, a number of bloggers have posted about the need for the Conservatives to cut spending first before they decide to delay tax cuts.

On Conservative Home, for instance, Tim writes:

Tax rises should only be put on the table once all possibilities for getting spending under control have been exhausted.

Now, as it happens, I agree with Tim's view that health should not be exempt from savings, although the electoral politics of that are very difficult indeed. But I cannot agree that tax rises should only happen once spending control has been completed.

It won't work like that.

The Conservatives need to try to reform public services so that essential service provision is damaged as little as possible. To do this will require time. In each area, there will be a period of determination of policy, a period where laws are passed (where needed) and a period where the new provisions are implemented.

The costs of redundancy payments, selling off buildings, paying off equipment leases, making transition payments, and so forth will all have to be met.

While all this is going on the majority of public spending cuts will come out of controlling cash by squeezing current services.

So to limit this sort of squeeze to tolerable levels there may be a need to fill some of the deficit gap in the short term with increased taxes. When the medium term policies finally kick-in it will then be possible to bring the taxes down again.

Deciding upon all the efficiencies and state shrinking first before increasing taxes sounds like a good idea, establishes a good principle (everything should be done to limit tax rises) but isn't practical.