LONDON, Feb 27: British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday that his government needed to slash the deficit “further and faster” after Moody’s ratings agency stripped the country of its cherished top-level AAA credit rating.

The comments sparked fresh speculation that finance minister George Osborne could announce more spending cuts when he unveils the coalition government’s annual budget on March 20.

“This credit rating does matter and it demonstrates that we have to go further and faster on reducing the deficit,” Cameron told lawmakers in his first comments on the topic since the agency axed Britain’s top credit assessment late last Friday.

Moody’s downgraded Britain by one notch from AAA to Aa1.

The leader of the opposition Labour party, Ed Miliband, described the downgrade as a “humiliation” for Cameron, whose Conservative-led government had made safeguarding the triple-A rating a key test of its economic policy.—AFP