Questions of "trust and credibility" are raised by this year's Budget, according to Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons.

"It's clear that the community has been repeatedly lied to about Berkeley and while I feel sorry for Mr. DeVent for having been put in that position it is the Premier in his capacity as former Minister of Works and Engineering Minister who should be held accountable, and based on what we've heard about Berkeley and the Bermuda Housing Corporation, we have to assume that there has been a lot of waste and mismanagement of taxpayers' money over the last five years."

Dr. Gibbons had been asked to give his initial reaction to the upcoming year's Budget.

He pointed out Government had spent some $3 billion since coming into power and was now acknowledging that it had failed to deliver on the social needs of the community.

"I think it's fair to say after a close election they know that they have not met the needs of the people of Bermuda, particularly in regard to social issues and this budget statement that we have heard today is an acknowledgement of that failure because, while on the surface it looks as though the taxpayer is being hit to pay for social programmes, a closer look shows that in many respects that's not the case.

"Because when you look at the $35 million increase in current account expenditure, some $26 million of that was acknowledged to have been eaten up in wage settlements which a labour Government has failed to negotiate successfully. And the taxpayer has ended up paying the price.

"When we look at some of the other priorities we see that they've used money from the bases settlement to fund $1.2 million for homeless housing, they used $2 million from that base money as a one off payment to increase seniors pensions by nine percent and we see that they have paid themselves over $700,000 to become full time Ministers (under legislature for Ministers and Members)."

He added that Government had their spending priorities wrong and "are actually rewarding themselves for not doing their jobs properly over the past five years."

"I think it's also important to point out that this one-off payment for pensions which is coming from the base settlement money will have to be followed next year by a sizeable increase in contributions for social insurance and traditionally the contributions have had to be quite a bit larger than the benefits and this will be on top of the very hefty increase in payroll tax."

And Dr. Gibbons said that the taxpayer was shelling out an extra $140 million since the Progressive Labour Party came to power in 1998.

"And based on the past performance of the past five years we really have to ask the question whether we believe them in their bid to spend more taxpayers money to address these social issues."

Asked what he liked about the Budget, he said: "A lot of people will be pleased, except for retailers that the $100 duty free allowance is now available whether or not you stay for 72 hours. But there are obviously large increases in spending, in taxes and in borrowing. And it's not clear that they are really getting to grips with some of the major issues on housing and seniors which the community expected."