The Conservatives respond to Alistair Darling's Budget speech:

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor: "This is a bad news Budget. Alistair Darling is kicking Britain's families when they are down."

- Alistair Darling has added £110 a year to every family's tax bill. The tax take will be £2.8bn a year higher by 2010 (£110 for every family) – and if benefits are excluded, the tax take will be £4bn higher

- The new taxes announced will add up to £1.5bn extra on alcoholic drinks, £1.6bn on drivers (even with the delayed fuel tax rise), and £1.7bn on businesses over the next three years.

Background

• Darling's first Budget: the main points

• The Chancellor's speech in full

• Darlings first Budget: the reaction

• Chancellor hits the home budget as his debts soar

• Need to know: Budget 2008

Multimedia

• The winners and losers

Rose-tinted specs fail to offer hope

The obvious justification for Mr Darling’s relatively upbeat scenario is that the outlook is fraught with uncertainty

Multimedia

• Video: the 'fingers crossed' budget

Even with these new taxes, borrowing will be up £20bn over the next four years, including a £7bn rise next year alone.

And the reason taxes and borrowing are up is because Labour failed to use the good years to prepare for the bad years. After 15 years of global growth, Britain has the worst budget deficit in the developed world.

The Government has no room for manoeuvre, so they are kicking families when they're down

What should have been in the Budget

• No more stealth taxes. The Chancellor should have implemented our targeted revenue neutral tax package on problem drinks such as alcopops and super-strength beers and ciders – instead of introducing more stealth taxes on responsible drinkers. And all Darling's green tax rises should have been used to cut taxes elsewhere.

• Reduce taxes on families. Darling should have raised the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1m and abolished Stamp Duty for first-time buyers paying up to £250,000 for their home – paid for by a simple levy of around £25,000 on foreign non-doms.

• Share the proceeds of growth. To help restore our public finances to a sustainable position, Darling should have promised to share the proceeds of growth over an economic cycle.

Gordon Brown has failed to prepare our economy

• Experts at the International Monetary Fund conclude that the UK economic slowdown will be twice as large as in any other G7 country.

• The cost of living has been rising faster than earnings growth for the last two years.

• The official inflation rate masks much higher inflation in necessities – food, mortgage payments, fuel, and petrol costs.

• Our tax and regulatory climate is increasingly uncompetitive. Five years ago, Britain had the 4th lowest rate of corporation tax in the EU. Today, we have the 19th lowest.

• Britain has the highest proportion of children in workless families in Europe.

• Youth unemployment is now higher than in 1997.

• There are 400,000 more families living in severe poverty under Labour.

Our budget deficit is the largest in Western Europe - leaving us ill-prepared for the potential economic slow-down ahead.

The cost of living under Labour

Responding to Alistair Darling's Budget, which saw alcohol duty and green taxes raised, David Cameron attacked Labour for increasing the cost of living for the British public.

He stressed that taxes had risen without any return for the taxpayers, and that inflation had increased, hitting the public hard.

He laid the blame for Britain's huge public debt firmly at Mr. Brown's door:

"The Prime Minister who got us into this mess cannot possibly be the Prime Minister to get us out of it."

And he said a Conservative Government would scrap complex business tax allowances to reduce corporation tax on all businesses, and use higher green taxes to help all families.

Explore Economics

• Autumn Budget 2007

• Budget 2008

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

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