Labour leader Ed Miliband unsurprisingly tore into the Budget after George Osborne announced plans to cut the top rate of income tax.

He told MPs: 'After today's Budget, millions will be paying more while millionaires pay less.'

The Chancellor used his Budget to announce that the 50p top rate of tax will drop to 45p from April next year.

In his response to the statement, Mr Miliband told the Commons it marked the end of the Government's claim that 'we are all in it together'.

Rail union leader Bob Crow said the tax changes meant that a banker on half a million pounds will receive a 'kick back'of �17,500, money 'robbed' from public services and the neediest in society.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB, said: 'The different treatment of people at either end of the income scale is stark. Ordinary families are losing their tax credits and child allowances and suffering pay freezes while people on top salaries of �150,000 to �1 million a year are getting cash hand outs.'

Local Government Association chairman Sir Merrick Cockell, said: 'Today's confirmation that public spending will continue to fall beyond 2015 has to be accompanied with recognition that councils have so far delivered extremely demanding cuts, which others have failed to match.

'It is simply unsustainable to go on cutting council funding when the adult care system is dangerously overstretched and the country's roads need a �10 billion upgrade. More of the same into the next funding period would have a serious negative impact on many of the services residents expect councils to deliver.'