by Trevor Sturgess

Alistair Darling’s pre-election Budget was dismissed as a hollow Easter egg by a building society boss.

Mike Lazenby, chief executive of Kent Reliance Building Society, said the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s effort was "like a well-packaged Easter egg - hollow in the middle" with "more holes in it than a colander".

But he welcomed the decision to double the stamp duty exemption on homes up to £250,000 for first-time buyers, although he wondered how a first-time buyer was defined.

Did it apply, for example, to a separated partner who had never had a mortgage before but had been previously living with a partner with a mortgage?

The decision to increase stamp duty to five per cent for buyers of £1m homes was acceptable because they could afford it.

The higher ISA limit - to £10,200 (half in cash) had already been announced, but he was pleased about the inflation-indexing of the ISA. "It was definitely a budget for an election," Mr Lazenby said.

Alistair Darling stunned cider producers by slapping a 10 per cent above-inflation duty hike on their product. Julian Barnes, of Biddenden Vineyards, was disappointed, saying it would add 6p to a litre bottle of cider.

His company sells 400,000 litres a year, which would mean shelling out an extra £25,000 to the taxman. He hoped customers would stay loyal, although he feared cider consumption in pubs might decline.

The company buys its apples from Kent vineyards and quantities might reduce if the tax rise hit consumption. "We are not the binge drinking cider people that we hear about," he said. "I’m hoping we will be flexible enough to survive the increase. The customer is going to have to dig deep to find the extra money but we are just hoping they will."

Desmond High, a business and corporate finance expert with EMC Management Consultants in Maidstone, said it was a 'phoney' Budget, "an unashamedly pre election effort which remained light on detail on any sort of medium-term tax raising and spending strategy".

He added: "Since much of it will never reach the statute books it is probably pointless discussing it in any detail, but neither party is going to make major changes in the short term so maybe we have to treat it as the best we have."