Labour cheers budget and awaits poll date

Britain's Chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget yesterday launched Labour on the spring election trail, leaving the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, with only the day to name.

May 3rd remains the favourite date, although some pundits insist an early dash for an April poll cannot be ruled out. Mr Blair has until next Monday to seek a dissolution of parliament should he wish to go to the country on April 5th.

Labour MPs cheered their prospects of a historic second term, whichever date Mr Blair decides on, despite a feeling among some backbenchers that the Chancellor's fifth budget statement was rather under whelming and that the "good news" of assorted family tax credits might prove complicated to sell on the voters' doorsteps.

Mr Brown vowed to put "families first" yesterday, as reportedly disaffected young married women with children emerged as key targets of the forthcoming election campaign. The Chancellor combined increases in the working families tax credit with the heavily-trailed announcement of extra money for new-born babies, an increase in maternity pay from £60 sterling to £100 a week by 2003 and the extension of the entitlement from 18 to 26 weeks, and the introduction of two weeks paternity leave paid at the same rate.

Mr Brown claimed some 25 million people would benefit from an across-the-board rise in the threshold, to £1,180 from £1,520, for the 10p starting rate for income tax.

That claim was immediately derided by the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, who said the change in most cases would produce increased takehome pay of just 75p a week.

And Mr Hague moved swiftly to begin the inevitable post-Budget Day inquest into the Chancellor's statement, charging Mr Brown with introducing 45 "stealth taxes" and with having raised the total tax take by £25 billion since Labour took power in 1997.

In a statement more busy than headline-grabbing, Mr Brown further widened the investment versus tax cuts gap between Labour and the Conservatives with £1 billion packages for health and education and another for the regeneration of inner city areas.

Casting his eye across large swathes of the electorate, Mr Brown had good news for drinkers, drivers and gamblers - announcing a freeze on duties on spirits, beer and wine, the extension of the new £55 car tax to a further five million cars under 1500cc, and the abolition of betting duty and its replacement by a bookmakers' profits tax of 15 per cent.

In addition to this freeze on "sin" taxes, Mr Brown also restricted himself to an inflation indexed 6p rise in the price of a packet of cigarettes.

And the Scots Presbyterian Chancellor responded to congregations "across the country" with help with the costs of church repairs, while announcing VAT changes to provide free museum entrance and the extension of tax relief for the film industry until 2005.