Budget statement live blog

1232, PH: Darling's started.  Stripey tie and gloomy face...

1233, JGF: Darling looks nervous and uncomfortable.  His tone is sombre.

1235, PH: Darling expects the economy to start growing "by the end of this year".

1236, PH: Darling's giving the global spiel, letting us know how much exports have fallen in Germany and Japan...

1237, PH: He claims that the £20 billion of "help" announced in the PBR is "coming through now". The Tories' "Labour isn't working" attack denies that.

1238, PH: Now Darling's taking credit for the "independent" Bank of England's interest rate cuts - "cheaper mortgages and loans".

1239, PH: On the G20 summit: "We agreed to take whatever action is necessary..."  Most annoying soundbite of the year?

1240, JGF: Expect Darling to regularly cherry-pick numbers to suggest that other developed economies are worse off than we are.

1240, FN: "In all these decisions, we have been guided by our core values" - yes, this - alas - has been the problem.

"Our exports down 14%, Germany 21% and Japan by 45%" - yes, thank God for a weak pound.

1241, JGF: Darling’s delivery style is slow and clear quite unlike Brown’s machine gun-style approach

1242, JGF: Here come a string of Brownies about the country’s position going into the recession

1242, FN: ."Accelerated capital projects projecting thousands of jobs in this country." - Really? How many? Has HMT quantified this at all?

"Expected to protect 500,000 jobs" - first time we have seen this figure, and I suspect it is concocted. Look forward to seeing methodology behind it.
G20 "agree to take whatever action was necessary - in total we agreed over $1 trillion of additional support for the word economy". A lie, not a dime of new money was agreed that day.

4.5m families with tracker mortages" - yes lucky them. But no luck for those caught on state-owned Northern Rock's variable rate, who are being squeezed to help NR repay its debt to the government. While NR is screwing the poor, Darling has no right to go on about mortgages.

1243, PH: Darling forecasts the economy will shrink by 3.5 percent this year. 

1244, PH: And he expects of 1.25 percent in 2010; then 3.5 percent each year from 2011.  There'll be "more sources" of growth, apparently - green technology etc.  Plenty of jeers from the other benches. His forecasts do seem on the optimistic side.

1246, JGF: I think ‘all over the world’ is going to be the phrase used most frequently in this Budget statement.

1247, PH: Darling's onto employment now, talking about "moral need".  He says that any young person unemployed for more than 12 months will be put in training.  There'll be more money for benefits as well - wonder where that's coming from.

1249, PH: £260 million for new skills training.  Funding too for new places in sixth form colleges and further education.

1251, JGF: I think Darling might just have covered up Balls’ blunder on sixth form places, more on that later.

1251, PH: The stamp duty holiday will be extended to the end of this year - that's a few months extra.

1252, PH: Various schemes for businesses, including the extension of a scheme by which loss-making comapnies can reclaim taxes.

1253, PH: Oh dear. Darling's sounding like Brown now: "We could have decided to do nothing..."

1255, JGF: There will be a scrappage scheme until March 2010. Good to see we can afford to subsidise the French and German car industries—not!

1257: Darling's wading through the public finances now.

1257: There's the big one: borrowing will be £175bn this year; £173 next year; falling to £119bn in around four years. Darling thinks the budget deficit will halve in that time.

1258, JGF: You know the numbers are going to be bad when Darling feels obliged to list the US’s huge deficits before mentioning the borrowing figures.

1259, PH: Darling's central argument seems to be that without borrowing/spending now, then the recession will last longer and we'll have bigger deficits.  This is Labour's riposte to the Tories' "Gordon Brown's Debt" poster.

1259, PH: Darling's central argument seems to be that without borrowing/spending now, then the recession will last longer and we'll have bigger deficits.  This is Labour's riposte to the Tory "Gordon Brown's Debt" poster.

1300, JGF: National debt 79 percent of GDP in 2013/14—enough to make you swallow hard.

1301, PGH: The debt figures are eyewateringly large, but are most likely underestimates. Future taxpayers should look on and tremble.

1301, JGF: Here comes the section on clawing back the pension tax relief of the rich

1302, JGF: 45p to 50p for those over £150,000, a crude attempt to create a Tory split. Everyone knows a 50p rate will produce less revenue than a 40p rate.

1303, JGF: If you want booze or cigarettes head to the shops this afternoon and stock up.

1304, PH: Here's the bit on fiscal tightening.  Efficiency savings, as expected.  Doesn't meet the scale of the problem.

1305, Md'A: 50p on high earners……13 years after Blair over-ruled Brown’s proposal to introduce this very measure it becomes Government policy. What will Osborne do?

1307, FN: Time to book a removal van before they all get take up by the wealthy fleeing London. Where will they go? anywhere apart from the following countries with higher rate of tax than 50% - Denmark (59%) Netherlands (52%) Sweden (55%). That's right: Britain will have the joint third highest top rate of tax on the planet.

1309, PH: There's not a huge amount we didn't (more or less) know about already. Darling's now cycling through the money he'll give to stalled house building.

1312, PH: A new £750m fund for emerging techonology.  This is Labour's "We are the future" routine.

1313, JGF: The Tories should dismiss 50p as an attempt to distract attention from the horrible borrowing and debt numbers: step round the elephant trap, don’t walk into it. If the Tories can hold the line, the IFS briefing tomorrow—which all us hacks treat as Holy writ—should come to their rescue by highlighting that the 50p rate will raise less money than a 45p or even a 40p rate.

1315, PH: Darling says that "coal, oil and gas" will continue to be major sources of energy in the future, and announces "new funding" for carbon capture technology.

1317, PH: Here's the "surprise" on child poverty.  The child tax credit will be raised; statutory redundancy pay will be increased; more money for grandparents.  No claim that the government will meet it's child poverty target, though. I wonder whether these new measures fall short of the £4.2 billion that is required.

1319, JGF: If Darling really means what he said—that from 2011 the UK trend growth rate will be 3.5 percent—it means that all the other borrowing and deficit numbers in this Budget are wrong, even worse than these historically unprecedented levels

1321, PH: Darling rattles through some help for "savers and old people" - increased ISA limits, tax relief on pensions - before sitting down without fanfare or aplomb.  The Labour benches seem quite muted.

1324, PH: Cameron's responding to Darling.  "As of today, any claim they have ever made to economic credibility is dead, over finished."  Stresses that the Government will double national debt - "Labour's decade of debt".

1325, PH: Good attempt by Cameron to undermine Brown's posturing on child poverty: "With debt like this, British children will be in poverty for years."

1327, JGF: ‘A whole chapter in red ink’, not a bad sound-bite. Cameron is off to an aggressive start.

1328, JGF: will he say anything on 50P?

1328, PH: Great stuff from Cameron on spending, pointing out the absurdity of Labour attacking "Tory cuts" when Labour are now intriducing "cuts" or their own.  The fiscal tightening isn't enough, though, he continues. "No one will ever believe anything that Labour say on public spending again".  He's trying to demolish Brown's favourite dividing line.

1329, JGF: The Tories have already got stuck into the red book and are highlighting the dodgy projections, impressive work from the Tory economic team.

1330, JGF: Good to see Cameron attacking the rise in beer duty. This is a tax that governments are normally confident they can raise without paying a political price.

1331, PH: This is really effective stuff from Cameron, reminscent of Osborne's reponse to the PBR last year.  Now he's onto the lack of a fiscal stimulus - "There is none. You couldn't introduce a proper fiscal stimulus as there's no more money.  But yet you swan around the world telling other countries..."

1332, PH: Cameron: "I would love to read out a list of countries that the IMF says will have a bigger deficit than us next year.  I can't."

1334, PH: Cameron's seems to have the right reponse to the 50p tax rate, referring to it as a "political tax rise" which doesn't deal with the crisis in our public finances. That's the bluntness that's needed.

1336, JGF: Cameron is making hay with a Labour minister saying going to the IMF should be de-stigmatised and treated like a spa treatment.

1336, PH: Cameron signs off in fiery style: "Why should we have another 14 months of this Government of the Living Dead."