Brown hits back at IMF's forecast

Gordon Brown has launched a savage counterattack on the International Monetary Fund over its prediction that taxes will have to rise in the next Parliament.

The Chancellor was furious with the IMF when its latest report suggested that he would have to either slash spending or put up taxes to balance his books.

Coming in the middle of the election campaign, the figures were seized on by the Tories as a "tax bombshell".

Mr Brown exacted his revenge when he chaired a meeting of the IMF's financial committee. Speaking in front of the fund's managing director Rodrigo de Rato, Mr Brown said: "I say this with respect to the staff of the IMF, they have been wrong before about British growth.

"We have achieved higher levels of growth than projected and I believe the figures are wrong again. This work was done in December. It is out of date, given the figures that I managed to put forward in the Budget it has become more out of date."