LONDON (Bloomberg) - UK Prime Minister David Cameron refused to rule out an increase in value-added tax (VAT) in his coalition government's emergency budget, due by the end of June.

In an interview with BBC television's Andrew Marr programme, his first since becoming leader of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Cameron was pressed on whether he would need to raise the sales tax from its current rate of 17.5 percent to help narrow the UK's record budget deficit.

"We said before the election, during the election and I am happy to say it now, that spending should bear the brunt of the burden," Cameron said. "So that is not something we plan to do," he said of a VAT rise. Even so, he stopped short of explicitly ruling out an increase, telling Marr, "You will have to wait for the first 50-day budget."

With the UK deficit approaching that of Greece at almost 12 percent of economic output, Cameron is under pressure to reduce borrowing and pledged to hold a budget within 50 days of coming to power in the May 6 election.

The Conservatives favour the burden of deficit-reduction being split four to one between spending cuts and tax increases.

VAT raised £85 billion ($124 billion) in the financial year through March 2009, accounting for 16 percent of total revenue.

Cameron said Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will today set out "a proper independent audit of government spending", the first step to tackling the hole in the nation's finances.

"What we have seen so far are just individual examples of very bad practice and frankly just bad behaviour; spending decisions taken in the last year or so of a Labour government that no rational government would have done," Cameron said. "Giving something like 75 percent of senior civil servants bonuses after everything that has happened - that's not a fiscal stimulus, it's a crazy thing to do."

Britain has not had a coalition government since 1945 and Cameron was questioned on how well his Conservatives are working with their Liberal Democrat partners. He described Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as "clearly part of the inner core", adding that the government will publish a fuller statement on its coalition agreement within "the next couple of weeks".

"I think probably more important, there's no document in the world, there's no agreement in the world that'll keep you all together," Cameron said. "In the end it's going to be people working together and the relationship between me and Nick Clegg, the relationship of Cabinet ministers with each other."

Even so, divisions emerged within the Liberal Democrats over their coalition with Conservatives. Former leader Charles Kennedy said in a newspaper article published yesterday he refused to vote for the deal when it was put to a meeting of party lawmakers during coalition negotiations on May 11.

Writing in The Observer, Kennedy said he had favored an alliance with the Labour Party, which formed the outgoing government.