WYRE Forest's Conservative Westminster hopeful has blasted the Government's handling of the country's finances following yesterday's budget.

Mark Garnier, the Conservative's district parliamentary spokesman, was commenting today following Alistair Darling's first budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to MPs in the House of Commons yesterday.

Mr Garnier, who has more than 20 years investment banker experience, said: "Ten years of fiddling and meddling by Prime Minister Gordon Brown has resulted in an economy that has the largest budget deficit in Western Europe.

"This year's budget was the seventh in a row where we have been told that The Treasury have underestimated their borrowing requirement.

"So as we go, in all eventuality, into at best a very difficult economic period or at worse a recession or even a depression, we are being told that borrowing must go up and that we have no reserves.

"This does not begin to address off balance sheet borrowing with PPI and PFI financing arrangements through the private sector for public services."

He added the handling of the run on the Northern Rock bank, which has now been nationalised, had "undermined" confidence in the UK as a financial centre.

Mr Garnier said: "Darling has just three options, and they are not good.

"As the economy inevitably slows down he must raise taxes, increase borrowing, or cut spending.

"None of these options are what we should be doing at this stage of the economic cycle."

It was Mr Darling's first budget since he took over the job from Gordon Brown - the now Prime Minister.

Mr Darling put 14p on a bottle of wine, 4p on a pint of beer, and 55p on a bottle of spirits while duty on a packet of cigarettes went up 11p.

He also announced a one-off £950 tax on the most polluting new cars but put back by six months a 2p rise in fuel duty.