2008 Budget Report: the political reaction
‘The cost of living is going up
and Labour is making it worse,’ Conservative leader
David Cameron has argued.
Speaking in the wake of Alistair
Darling’s debut Budget statement, Cameron criticised
the Chancellor’s ‘failure to recognise’ the soaring
cost of everyday living.
Cameron said Darling had had ‘the
most disastrous start of any Chancellor in modern history’ but conceded that
his predecessor Gordon Brown should bear much of the blame.
‘The Chancellor was put in a hole
by the Prime Minister and they both kept digging,’ he said.
Cameron’s thoughts were echoed by the Liberal
Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who accused Darling of performing an ‘act
of political ventriloquism’.
Clegg claimed that Darling was using environmental
taxes - such as those the proposed changes to vehicle exercise duty to target the highest polluters - to take more from ‘the kitty of
the lowest earners’.
‘This was an opportunity to give whatever help
possible to the millions of hard-pressed families who are feeling the pinch,
whose money is simply not stretching as far as it once did,’ he told the
Commons.
Describing the Darling’s statement as a ‘green cop
out’, the Tory leader added: ‘This is a meagre,
tinkering Budget which gives precious little help to the poor but maintains
special treatment to the rich - a Budget designed to fill a black hole
masquerading as good for the environment. A Budget which will
not make