Anne McIntosh, MP for the Vale of York, has fired a Budget warning shot across the bows of Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The Tory MP, addressing a meeting of businessmen attending her Yorkshire First Business Club at Rudding House, Knaresborough, expressed concern that the Labour Government would bring in Budget measures that would increase the tax burden on British business and damage rural parts of North Yorkshire.

She warned: "An increase in car taxes - both company car taxation and vehicle excise duty - will have a significant effect on local businesses. It will also affect all those living in rural areas, as will the proposed increases in fuel duty." She also warned that;labolishing ACT tax credits would reduce pension fund incomes so that companies and employees would have to increase pension contributions at great cost to maintain anticipated pay-outs;

* changes to inheritance tax, possibly removing reliefs on farmland, would have a significant impact on North Yorkshire's farming community and may threaten the viability of keeping farm businesses within the family;

* abolishing PEPs and TESSAs would have a significant impact on the financial community, especially as not enough was yet known about the replacement Individual Savings Account. Its limit of £50,000 per person halves the tax-exempt savings allowed in PEPs and TESSAs.

Miss McIntosh's Budget alert comes as experts at KPMG accountants do a bit of Budget soothsaying of their own, predicting that Chancellor Brown's speech on Tuesday will re-open the cash v car debate for company car drivers, with the result being a major shift in business car fleet policy.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.