In 2010, as a result of the deterioration in the UK's public finances—according to fiscal conservatives caused by another spate of deficit spending under the previous Labour government, the late-2000s recession and by the European sovereign debt crisis—the Liberal Democrat-Conservative Coalition embarked on an austerity programme, featuring a combination of spending cuts and tax rises, in an attempt to halve the deficit and completely eliminate the structural deficit over the five-year parliament.[24]