In bitter exchanges between the two in the House of Commons, Francis Maude said the country would be disgusted by the chancellor's behaviour.

The Tories won't answer, says Gordon Brown

During a debate on Mr Brown's pre-budget statement of Tuesday, the chancellor said Tories could not give a simple answer on whether they would maintain the basic state pension level in line with inflation, as they had pledged in their manifesto.

Pointing angrily, Mr Maude said: "The country will be disgusted by a chancellor behaving in this way, who's responsible for the downturn starting in this country and all he can do is come here, make cheap debating points.

"He ought to grow up, stop being an adolescent, student-politician and take his job seriously"

But the chancellor retorted that Mr Maude failed to give a straight answer on pensions. It had been a very revealing debate, he said, as Mr Maude dismissed his comments by waving his hands from the opposition benches.

Message for pensioners

Mr Brown went on: "If he will not give us an answer, every pensioner in the country should know now that the Labour government is raising the pension in line with inflation and has provided winter fuel payments, but the Conservative Party will not guarantee that if they were in government they would do that."

He said Labour's £40bn extra spending on health and education would be at risk under the Tories.

He boasted that the government was working to improve productivity, maintaining economic stability, improving public services and would be "fair to every citizen of the country".

In his statement, Mr Brown's revised growth forecast was 2.75% for 1998, followed by 1%-1.5% next year.

For the Liberal Democrats, Treasury spokesman Malcolm Bruce said the only thing Conservatives were sure about was that they wanted a recession because it was their only hope of political gain.

He reminded the Opposition that although they talked about "fantasy forecasts", their own forecasts had undergone substantial revisions.

He backed the chancellor's decision to give the Bank of England independence on interest rates.

But Mr Bruce said many people in manufacturing industry had listened to Mr Brown's statement in vain for some glimmer of hope.

He accused the chancellor of failing to address the manufacturing crisis and said he was in danger of setting out complacent policies that were putting jobs at risk.

Interest rate cuts, not tax cuts, should now be Mr Brown's priority, he said.