LON­DON-Let the au­dits be­gin. As the UK tight­ens its belt dur­ing eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial said Sun­day he was hir­ing more than 2,000 ex­tra tax in­spec­tors to make sure that Britain's wealth­i­est feel the squeeze. The British Trea­sury's Chief Sec­re­tary, Dan­ny Alexan­der, told the Sun­day In­de­pen­dent news­pa­per that his pri­or­i­ty was "mak­ing sure that those with broad­est shoul­ders bear their fair share of the bur­den." Alexan­der said a 100-mem­ber "af­flu­ence team" would be in place in less than a month to keep an eye on the coun­try's wealth­i­est tax­pay­ers - the es­ti­mat­ed 350,000 peo­ple whose per­son­al wealth ex­ceeds 2.5 mil­lion pounds (US$3.95 mil­lion).

The British gov­ern­ment's crack­down on tax eva­sion has al­ready net­ted more than 2 bil­lion pounds (US$3 bil­lion) a year, Alexan­der said, pre­dict­ing that fig­ure could rise to 7 bil­lion pounds (US$10.6 bil­lion) a year by 2015. Britain is go­ing through po­lit­i­cal­ly painful se­ries cut­backs aimed at restor­ing or­der to its fi­nances af­ter the Labour gov­ern­ment, in pow­er for 13 years, sad­dled the coun­try with bil­lions in debt.

AP