The Liberal Democrats yesterday turned their fire on business chiefs backing Tory plans to cut national insurance.

Party leader Nick Clegg said wealthy business leaders should not "tell governments exactly how to run this country".

Clegg's deputy, Vince Cable, described the intervention of some of Britain's most prominent business figures as "nauseating".

Speaking to reporters in his Sheffield Hallam constituency, Clegg said: "We are in the middle of an economic crisis which was created by vested interests, a small clique of people in the banking sector, basically holding a gun to the head of the rest of the British economy. Much as I respect what these business people have got to say, the role of any democratically elected government is to govern for everybody, not just for what a small handful of self-appointed spokespeople say. I'm not going to tell those businesses how to run their business. I don't think they should tell governments exactly how to run this country."

In an interview with the Guardian, Cable accused the more than 130 captains of industry who came out in favour of the Conservative plan of allowing themselves to be "used" by the Tories. He said they now needed to explain how the cut in the government's planned national insurance increase would be paid for.

"If they are going to wade into this debate, they do have an obligation to explain how this national insurance cut is going to be paid for and that is where they are failing and they are being used," he said.

"I just find it utterly nauseating all these chairmen and chief executives of Ftse companies, being paid 100 times the pay of their average employees, lecturing us on how we should run the country. I find it barefaced cheek."

Business leaders previously reacted angrily to suggestions by Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson that they were "deceived" by the Conservatives.

Clegg supported the emotive language used by his treasury spokesman, which went far beyond that used by the senior Labour figures.

"I certainly would use exactly the same words as Vince because I don't think it's right that people earning huge amounts of money, some of whom get out of paying any meaningful tax whatsoever by exploiting huge tax loopholes, should start lecturing everybody else about tax and spend."