THE Chancellor’s budget announcement of cuts in the Severn Bridge tolls has been attacked by Mersey Tunnel campaigners.

George Osborne included the fee reductions in his speech to Parliament this afternoon.

Unsurprisingly, the South Wales Chamber of Commerce welcomed the news telling the BBC the tolls had "long been a stumbling block for the Welsh economy".

"The Severn tolls are widely regarded as a tax on Wales' competitiveness and a tax on businesses," said a spokesman.

Mersey Tunnel tolls have long been a source of irritation for Wirral drivers and have been panned as a “tax on Wirral.”

John McGoldrick, secretary of Mersey Tunnel Users' Association, told the Globe: "If the Chancellor is reducing the Severn Bridge tolls in 2018, as he claims that he is, then why on Merseyside are we faced with the situation of ever-increasing tolls?

"It seems to us that concessions are being handed out to other parts of the country that we are just not getting here."

The hated tolls are usually increased annually, but this year they were frozen at £1.70 each way.

Wirral South Labour MP Alison McGovern is also underwhelmed by Mr Osborne's budget.

The shadow education minister criticised the Chancellor's "soaring rhetoric" on the so-called "northern powerhouse."

She said: "The reason I am in politics is because I grew up in Merseyside in the 1980s and 90s and I knew that the Government in this place didn't really care much at all about families like mine.

"I wanted to see a future for my friends and family in Wirral South where we knew we didn't have to leave the place that we loved to have a successful career.

"The Chancellor has come along today to try to use rhetoric and spin to talk about a 'northern powerhouse' that nobody in Merseyside believes - not for a moment, not for a second.

"Because we've been living with the Chancellor's true political priorities.

"We've been living with a level of cuts that is not seen in more wealthy parts of the country, and that's despite historic deprivation and that's despite still living with the consequences of a Tory government that de-industrialised the North and gave no other options."