UK businesses fear that the Government’s ambitious carbon budget, which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2020 by 2025, could force them to slash jobs by burdening them with a heavy pile of green taxes on pollution.

UK cabinet ministers have already agreed to a legally binding deal to drastically slash green house emissions over the next two decades.

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne is expected to announce a deal this week that will commit the country to greenhouse gases cuts of 50 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, by 2025.

However, the Government is still overlooking some of the recommendations made by its own statutory Committee on Climate Change. The Committee on Climate change had recommended that the Government should tighten their existing targets for 2013 to 2023. It recommended that emissions should be slashed by 60 per cent by 2030. But, ministers accepted neither of these requests.

The UK is already committed to slash emissions by 34 per cent by the end of this decade.

Business secretary Vince Cable and Finance Minister George Osborne are however reportedly expressed opposition to the ambitious carbon cuts proposals.