Cllr Cliff Morris, Labour and Bolton Council leader, said: “I am disappointed because this is going to hit the poorest people in society. I am not happy about the VAT increase, and there is no point in saying that they are to increase people’s personal tax allowance while increasing everything else. I don’t believe it when they said they didn’t know how bad the situation was, because everyone knew. In fact, the debt is not as big as we budgeted for.”

Cllr John Walsh, leader of Bolton Council’s Conservative group, said: “It was a tough budget for tough times. Some people will see it as unpalatable but it will protect those people who work and are on low incomes.

“The capital programme has been protected which should be good news for projects such as Building Schools for the Future and I think that overall it was a very cleverly-crafted budget. It was a budget for the 21st century which tackles the big issues of 2010 and if it hadn’t been put together now then I would suggest things would be much worse next year.”

Cllr David Wilkinson, deputy leader of Bolton Council’s Liberal Democrat group, said: “It is like all budgets — there is some good and some bad. Everyone in every political party, in the public sector, in the private sector and the unions knew that there would have to be cuts after the General Election, anyone who says different is misleading the public.

“Lifting people out of the tax system is a good thing, as is the re-linking of the pension to earnings. There are some things I am not happy with — the VAT increase being one of them. It affects the poorer people and I don’t like to see those kind of tax increases.”

David Crausby, Labour MP for Bolton North East, said: “The most devastating part of the budget is the VAT increase and that is the most treacherous. The Liberal Democrats said that they would not increase VAT during the General Election campaign and the Tories said they had no plans to. That was clearly not the case. This is a budget that I would expect from a Conservative government. It is OK trying to get people off benefits but you need to create the jobs for them to move into. I agree that the deficit needs cutting — I have not tried to hide that — but the best way is by growth, not by making savage cuts and increasing tax.”