Budget 2012: Giving More Money to the Millionaires?

George Osborne's Budget has been condemned by Ed Miliband as marking the end of the coalition's "We are all in it together" claim.

Miliband claimed that the Budget, which sees a drop in the 50p top tax rate to 45p along with unchanged fuel duty and cuts to child benefits, represented the "wrong choices, wrong priorities, same old Tories".

In a heated speech and amid repeated heckling in the House, Miliband said Osborne's reforms created a "millionaire's Budget".

His comments were made in response to assurances by Osborne that the Budget, which highlighted an increase in personal tax allowance thresholds to £9,205 from April 2013, was aimed at increasing the burden on the rich while raising the lowest earners out of tax.

Miliband argued that Osborne was simply "giving with one hand and taking with the other", as lower-income familes struggled with cuts to tax credits and no reduction in fuel duty.

"A family working for 16 hours on the minimum wage will lose more than £4,000 in tax credits if they don't work more hours," he said.

"It's the Tory mentatility that the poor can be made to work harder by making them poorer and the rich will work harder if you make them richer."

Miliband also turned on the Liberal Democrats who saw their plan agreed for an increase in stamp duty on homes worth more than £2m from five percent to seven percent. He accused them of betraying their ideals.

"The party that once followed Lloyd George followed George Osborne," he said.

Miliband was faced with a tricky proposition of pulling a critical political narrative out of the Budget after Osborne asserted that the top tax rate had generated only £1bn - a third of projections.

Reaction among the business community to the Budget measures, which included including slashing corporation tax to 22 percent by 2014, was mixed.

Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors, told the BBC: "While any tax reduction is welcome, the chancellor has not done enough to free business from the burdens and barriers that are holding economic growth back.

"There was a bold move on corporation tax but in the bigger picture this is still not enough or fast enough."

Estate agents warned The Independent that the stamp duty increase on expensive homes could trigger a slowdown in on sales in richer area. Those areas are vital for supporting prices, they said.

Peter Rollings, chief executive of Marsh and Parsons, said: "Not only will this policy disproportionately target London, where house prices are in a league of their own, it risks killing the goose that lays the golden egg."

The Confederation of British Industry welcomed the Budget, claiming Osborne was providing a "much-needed confidence boost".