The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in his budget the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, headed off down the motorway towards climate catastrophe, all the while proclaiming his intention to protect the environment.

“Over £27bn of tarmac,” he announced, for 4,000 miles of major new roads. In stark contrast, low-carbon transport was put in the slow lane, getting £1bn.

Worse, Sunak flunked a golden opportunity to end the decade-long freeze on fuel duty that has pushed up traffic and pollution and suppressed bus and train travel. The oil price is now plummeting, but even if it had been raised drivers might not have seen any change in the price at the pump.

Transport emissions are now the biggest contributor to the UK’s carbon emissions and they are rising; 90% come from the roads. Emissions from transport are a key reason the government is on track to miss its own legally binding carbon targets.

The other key reason is the UK’s terribly energy inefficient buildings, which lose heat up to three times as quickly as homes in neighbouring countries. Making homes cleaner, cosier, and cheaper to heat, is a no-brainer. Yet there was not a single word on this in Sunak’s speech or the 125-page budget document.

This failure really matters, with the UK hosting a crucial UN climate in just eight months’ time. The summit, Cop26, in Glasgow, is a pledging party at which the world’s nations must offer much bigger emissions cuts to head off the climate crisis. The host needs to start the party with a splashy pledge, but Sunak just tossed in a crumpled fiver found in a back pocket.....

More here:

Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, used his speech in the budget debate to urge Rishi Sunak not to abandon the fiscal rules that he (Javid) announced during the general election campaign. Under these rules, that were included in the Conservative manifesto, the party committed to: 1) not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending; 2) capping average net public sector net investment at 3% of GDP; and 3) ensuring that debt interest payments don’t exceed 6% of government revenue.

Sunak did not formally abandon the three rules. But he said that he would review the fiscal framework, and report back in the autumn, implying that he wants to loosen Javid’s rules.

Echoing the point made by Theresa May in her speech earlier (see 3.55pm), Javid said the government should not abandon its reputation for fiscal responsibility. He urged the government “get on to the front foot to support the financially vulnerable, who will be as fearful for their economic security as they are for their health”. And he went on:

Whilst I welcome the actions that [Sunak] has set out today, he must stand ready to do more as the situation demands, and not wait necessarily for the comprehensive spending review or the next budget.

The British economy is in a strong position to weather the current storm, but we mustn’t forget that [Sunak] is only able to deploy that fire power that he has done so today because of the choices consecutive Conservative chancellors have made.

Choices to control spending, to control borrowing and to control debt. That’s why the fiscal rules that we set out in our manifesto are important.

Sticking to those rules in normal times is what separates us from the parties opposite. They help us keep our economy strong, they help us to keep taxes low and they preserve our flexibility for when we need it most.

One charge levelled against Boris Johnson is that he is actually running a Vote Leave government flying under Conservative party colours as a flag of convenience. Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings ran the Vote Leave campaign, and many of their Vote Leave colleagues are in top jobs. Only this morning there were reports that Chris Grayling, another leading Vote Leave campaign, is being lined up to chair the intelligence and security committee. (See 11.03am.)

At one stage during the 2016 referendum campaign Vote Leave started acting like a shadow government and making manifesto promises. In a joint article for the Sun, Johnson, Gove and the Labour MP Gisela Stuart announced that after the UK voted to leave the EU, they would be able to abolish VAT on household fuel bills. They wrote:

In 1993, VAT on household energy bills was imposed. This makes gas and electricity much more expensive. EU rules mean we cannot take VAT off those bills.

The least wealthy are hit particularly hard. The poorest households spend three times more of their income on household energy bills than the richest households spend. As long as we are in the EU, we are not allowed to cut this tax.

When we Vote Leave, we will be able to scrap this unfair and damaging tax. It isn’t right that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels impose taxes on the poorest and elected British politicians can do nothing.

This is the first budget since Brexit - but this particular Vote Leave pledge appears to have been abandoned. It would have cost the Treasury almost £2bn, according to a calculation the campaign made four years ago. Instead the government is marking the departure from the EU by abolishing the tampon tax, a more modest measure costing the government £15m a year.

The government is committed to levelling up, and Rishi Sunak used that phrase seven times in his speech. That implies measures that help the poor more than the rich. But, when taking decisions about tax, he ended up favouring wealthier families over poorer families.

The Treasury has published a distributional impact assessment (pdf) of the budget and, at first glance, it appears to be a model of progressive policymaking. Look at this chart. It shows the impact of decisions made in the budget and in last year’s spending round on households as a percentage of net income. And the poorest 10% of households gained most and the richest 10% gained least.

This chart presents the impact on households in cash terms, not as a percentage of household income, and this presents a different picture (because a £350 per week gain is worth more in percentage terms to a poor household than a rich one). On this measure, all households are getting much the same, apart from the wealthiest 10%.

But these charts measure the impact of changes to taxes, benefits and “benefits-in-kind from public services” and most of the gain to people in most groups comes from the third category. For the poorest 10%, all the gains come from higher spending on public services. (The Treasury tries to make a calculation showing, for example, how much extra NHS spending might be worth to each household in cash terms.)

These “benefits-in-kind” gains are not fictitious, and poorer families are generally more reliant on public services than wealthier families. But, if you look at the gains from tax policy alone (the dark green bars), most of the benefits are going to families in the richest half of the population. That is because the government’s main tax announcement, lifting the threshold for national insurance, benefits higher earners.

Theresa May, the former Conservative prime minister, has been speaking in the budget debate and, while she did not explicitly criticise the government for spending too much, she urged the government not to abandon “restraint and caution”. She told MPs:

I trust in the discussions that were held prior to the delivery of the budget that there was the necessary tension between No 10 and the Treasury in developing this budget.

Generally speaking, prime ministers want to spend money and chancellors want to manage the public finances prudently ...

That sound management of the public finances has always been one of the USPs of the Conservative party and in my time in politics I have seen more than once a Labour government come in, trash the economy, leave office with more people unemployed than when they came into office, and then a Conservative government having to come in, restore the economy, restore the public finances and save the day.

So while spending a lot of money may be popular and may seem the natural thing to do, there is of course that necessity of having a realistic assessment of the longer-term impact of those decisions, the longer-term consequences, and a necessity to ensure that we have that restraint and caution that enables us to make the public finances continue to be strong into the future.

The OBR chief, Robert Chote, is discussing the fiscal watchdog’s new forecasts at a press conference in London now.

He points out that public sector net debt is forecast to hit £2tn in 2024-25 (£2,031bn, to be precise).

But it’s more sensible to look at debt as a share of the economy, where UK government debt is expected to hover around 75% of GDP.

On coronavirus, Chote predicts that it will push up government borrowing in the short term. In the long term, he hopes it will have less impact.

But the economic disruption caused by the virus could make it harder for the government to actually implement its capital spending plans, Chote cautions.

Chote also refuses to comment on whether the government’s borrowing assumptions are a “gamble”, even though he leaves the OBR soon and should be “demob happy”.

I’m neither demob nor happy, Chote tells reporters.

In its Economic and Fiscal Outlook report (pdf), the Office for Budget Responsibility says Brexit has led to the economy being 2% smaller than it would have been. In paragraph 1.2 it says:

We estimate that the economic effects of the referendum vote have so far reduced potential output by around 2%, relative to what would have happened in its absence. Part of this reflects lower net inward migration, but mostly it reflects weaker productivity growth on the back of depressed business investment and the diversion of resources from production towards preparing for potential Brexit outcomes. Real business investment has barely grown since the referendum, whereas our March 2016 forecast assumed it would have risen more than 20% by now. We expect this shortfall to be partly reversed as the specifics of the trading relationship are clarified, hence reducing uncertainty. But, working in the other direction, we expect the adverse effect of higher trade barriers to build through our five-year forecast period and beyond.

The OBR also says that most of the negative impact that Brexit will have on UK productivity is still in the pipeline. It says:

Broadly speaking, we believe that around one-third of the long-run hit to productivity from Brexit has already happened, that another third is likely to come over the forecast period and the rest comes through beyond our forecast horizon.

Rishi Sunak’s giveaway budget is going to drive house prices up.

The OBR predicts that house price inflation will hit 7.5% in the third quarter of 2021, then ease back to 4.1% by 2024.

Overall, the watchdog expects house prices to rise by 23% between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2024. It had previously expected a 17% increase, before today’s measures were taken into account.

That’s because the OBR believes real household income growth will be stronger (good news for families), and that interest rates will stay low.

The OBR’s forecasts show that the money saved by leaving the European Union is being recycled into substitute UK spending.

That includes support for the farming sector, industrial strategy and science programmes.

As you can see, these “direct Brexit fiscal savings’ are only worth £4.3bn this financial year. That’s £82m a week – not what you may have read on the side of a bus in 2016! But that’s because Britain’s EU divorce payments are frontloaded.

By 2024-25 it’s worth £14.6bn (£11.3bn in lieu of EU transfers, and £3.3bn of estimated customs duties). That’s £280m per week. But, of course, much of that will be replacing funding that came from the EU before …

Buried in the policy papers published alongside the budget is what would once have been headline news: confirmation that the government intends to impose a “digital sales tax”, a 2% levy on the UK revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, from 1 April.

The move, first announced in the 2018 budget, is an attempt to onshore some of the economic value created by technology companies such as Google and Facebook.

Currently, those companies argue that the economic activity generated in sales of services such as advertising and digital media should accrue where their HQs are based, in low-tax environments such as Ireland or Luxembourg. That allows them to keep their tax burden low in the UK, even as their importance to the British economy grows.

The move will be unpopular with the US, since the limitations put in place by the Treasury ensure that almost all of the revenues will come from American tech giants: only companies with £25m of revenues are covered at all, and the list of affected businesses is seemingly carefully drawn to include Google, Facebook and Amazon, while excluding European digital successes like Spotify (which doesn’t operate in the affected areas of “search engines, social media services and online marketplaces”) or Monzo (with “financial services providers” given an explicit carve-out of the “online marketplaces” coverage).

Those carve-outs do also limit the revenue raising possibilities of the act, however: the OBR currently expects it to raise £280m in its first year in effect, rising to a little over £500m by the end of 2025.

So the move looks like a PR win more than a financial coup – but if that’s the case, why not celebrate it at the despatch box? It may be a desire that this budget be seen as more tech-first than techlash: the chancellor also announced billions of investment in R&D, billions more in high-speed broadband, and a tax cut for digital media, allowing digital books, newspapers, magazines and academic journals to be sold VAT free, like their print counterparts.

Or it may be the uncomfortable fact that the government is about to barrel head-first into complex trade negotiations with a US government that views any digital taxes as a direct attack on American interests, and has said as much to the French when they proposed their own version – threatening massive tariffs on wine, cheese, handbags and cookware in response

In his budget speech Rishi Sunak said that the coronavirus rescue package he was announcing was worth £30bn. Having announced a series of coronavirus-specific measures, he told MPs:

Those measures are on top of plans that I will set out later in this budget, which provide an additional fiscal loosening of £18bn to support the economy this year.

That means I am announcing today, in total, a £30bn fiscal stimulus to support British people, British jobs and British businesses through this moment.

In other words, more than half of the £30bn is made up of general spending measures to boost the economy already in the pipeline. Sunak acknowledged this, of course, and measures to boost the economy will be welcome. But it does mean that £12bn is more accurate price tag for the coronavirus-specific measures than £30bn.

This Treasury briefing paper (pdf) has a good summary of these measures, which starts by saying Sunak set out “a £12bn package of temporary, timely and targeted measures to support public services, individuals and businesses through the economic disruption caused by Covid-19”.

Here are some extracts from Jeremy Corbyn’s speech responding to the budget.

• Corbyn said the budget would not reverse the damage done to the economy by Tory economic policies over the last decade. He said:

Today’s budget was billed as a turning point, a chance to deliver, in particular on the promises made to working class communities during the general election. But it doesn’t come close.

The government’s boast of the biggest investment since the 1950s is frankly a sleight of hand. It’s in fact only the biggest since they began their slash and burn assault on our services, economic infrastructure and living standards in 2010.

Having ruthlessly forced down the living standards and life chances of millions of our people for a decade, the talk of levelling up is a cruel joke.

The reality is that this is a budget which has an admission of failure - an admission that austerity has been a failed experiment. It didn’t solve our economic problems, but made them worse, that held back our own recovery and failed even in its own terms ...

Today’s measures go nowhere near reversing the damage that has been done to our country ...

Amid a blizzard of hype, [the chancellor is] claiming today marks the biggest capital injection since the 1950s, but this is actually all smoke and mirrors. As a percentage of GDP it only returns us to the levels we had before the Conservatives slashed investment so drastically in 2010.

• He said the cuts over the last 10 years would make the fight against coronavirus harder. He said:

We’ll only overcome this virus because of the dedication of our NHS staff, carers and public servants.

The steps the government has announced today to head off the economic impact of the coronavirus are obviously welcome but I have some points I wish to raise.

We have to be straight with people, it is going to be much tougher because of the last 10 years of deeply damaging and counter-productive cuts to all of our essential public services.

We’re going into this crisis with our public services on their knees and as today’s figures confirm, with a fundamentally weak economy which is now flat-lining with zero growth even before the impact of coronavirus.

• Corbyn said austerity was not over. He said:

Now one has to believe austerity is over - but it’s not true.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, it’d take at least £54bn of current spending this year, excluding health and social care, to get us back to 2010 levels. We’ve heard nothing approaching that scale from the chancellor today. Without it, the IFS says austerity is baked into our economy.

• He said the budget showed the government was not serious about tackling climate change. He said:

The government has maintained the freeze on fuel duty without lowering bus and rail fares, showing complacency about the climate emergency.

When the chancellor announced with such aplomb a huge investment in road building across the country - where is the environmental impact assessment being made of that policy?

• He criticised the decision not to abolish entrepreneurs’ relief in its entirety. He said:

A huge subsidy mainly benefiting 5,000 people who make an average of £350,000 per year. I can only assume those who fund the Conservative party have had a quiet word with the chancellor and told him to back off.

The government will be taking in more tax, as well as spending more and borrowing more.

The net tax rise announced in the budget reduces borrowing by an average of £5.5bn a year, the OBR says.

That’s primarily due to cancelling next month’s cut in corporation tax, from 19% to 17%. That will bring in £6.4bn per year on average.

A boost for the Treasury, but one which must leave UK firms with less money to invest or fund pay rises.

Today’s budget is the biggest giveaway since Norman Lamont was chancellor.

That’s according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, which just released its verdict (online here).

The OBR confirm that the government is breaking free from the chains of austerity – with the “largest sustained fiscal loosening” since the pre-election budget in 1992.

In the medium term, this takes real day-to-day spending per person back to pre-austerity levels, the watchdog says.

However.... the domestic effects of the coronavirus outbreak and the government’s response to it came too late to include in its projections. So today’s growth figures are no longer the ‘central’ forecast.

Loosening the purse strings will drive UK government debt up by £125bn over the next five years, the OBR says:

Turning to those policy decisions, the government has proposed the largest sustained fiscal loosening since the pre-election budget of March 1992 (which was reversed within months after the UK left the European exchange rate mechanism in September that year).

Relative to our pre-measures baseline forecast, the government’s policy decisions increase the budget deficit by 0.9 per cent of GDP on average over the next five years and add £125 billion (4.6 per cent of GDP) to public sector net debt by 2024-25.

Faced with the gloomiest economic clouds since his hedge fund days, Rishi Sunak has taken a sensible choice - spend!

People have joked about Dominic Cummings writing the budget – but the chancellor’s boast that infrastructure spending will boost growth in dark times could have been written by John Maynard Keynes.

Today’s £30bn programme to protect the UK from the coronavirus compares favourably with similar moves from other countries (Italy plumped for a €25bn (£21.5bn).

It seems to cover the key issues — financial assistance to keep small firms operating, and help for people who can’t work because they’re ill or isolated. Plus that £5bn emergency funding for the NHS.

Combined with the Bank of England’s emergency interest rate cut at 7am today, it’s the co-ordinated fiscal and monetary response that is needed at time of crisis.

Sunak’s ‘whatever it takes’ message should have cheered the City too. But actually, there’s little immediate reaction in the markets — partly because the UK was facing five more years of weak growth before the coronavirus struck (and the picture may be rather worse now).

Plus – the bigger the package, the more nervous the government must be about a recession....

Sunak has also repudiated his own party’s decade-long austerity message, with the “largest sustained fiscal boost in 30 years”.

He proudly told the House that his £175bn of extra infrastructure spending would boost the UK’s long-term productivity. Critics of Osbornomics pointed this out years ago.

But increased spending means increased borrowing — and it’s clear that balancing the books is off the agenda. Rightly so, given the prospect of a global downturn if Covid-19 becomes a pandemic.

Sunak says it is not right that digital publications are subject to VAT.

• Sunak says he will remove VAT on digital publications.

And he includes a joke. There will be no VAT on works of fiction, “like John McDonnell’s Economics for the Many”, he says.

Today’s growth forecasts are decidedly mixed, showing that the UK economy was expected to grow rather slowly over the next five years, even before Covid-19.

Predicted growth has been cut this year, and in 2022 and 2023 – although 2021 did look rosier. But the coronavirus crisis could change that.

For the record, here they are:

• 2020: Growth of 1.1%, down from 1.4% forecast in the 2019 spring statement
• 2021: Growth of 1.8%, up from 1.6%
• 2022: Growth of 1.5%, down from 1.6%
• 2023: Growth of 1.3%, down from 1.6%
• 2024 Growth of 1.4% – new forecast

But given the fiscal stimulus announced today, the Office for Budget Responsibility will want to rework these numbers.

We also don’t have much clarity on the government’s borrowing plans yet – so stay tuned (we’ll go through the budget smallprint later).

Sunak says all alcohol duties will be frozen next year.

And fuel duty will be frozen next year too, he says.

Sunak says there is a live global debate about what the low-interest environment means for fiscal policy.

He says he wants to take time to consider these issues over the coming months.

He will review the fiscal framework, and report back in the autumn, he says.

• Sunak says he will review the Treasury’s fiscal rules. (That implies that the new rules announced by his predecessor Sajid Javid during the election campaign are no longer considered sacrosanct.)

Sunak turns to the growth forecasts.

He says even before coronavirus hit, the economy was slowing.

He says the UK will respond with a response that is brave and bold.

The government is investing in world-class infrastructure.

He says he is funding investment worth £170bn over the next five years.

He says the OBR says this means growth will be 0.5% higher than it otherwise would have been.

And he says the OBR is also saying this will increase long-term productivity by 2.5%.

Sunak says the total value of his fiscal stimulus is £30bn.

He says this is one of the most comprehensive responses of any government around the world to date.

Sunak says he has a three-point plan.

First the NHS will get whatever help it needs, “whatever it costs”.

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is delivering his budget statement now.

He starts by saying he wants to get straight to the issue of coronavirus.

He knows how worried people are.

He says the government is doing “everything we can” to keep people healthy and the country financially secure.

This is an issue “above party”, he says.

He says the Commons has always been willing to put aside party politics and act in the national interest.

Today he will set out the economic response.

Jeremy Corbyn starts by saying his thoughts are with the loved ones of those who have died from coronavirus, and with Nadine Dorries. He pays tribute to the work of NHS staff.

Referring to international women’s day, he says a quarter of social care women are on zero-hours contracts. They may be asked to self-isolate. But they won’t get sick pay. Will the PM ensure they do?

Johnson wishes Dorries a speedy recovery. He says the Commons will be guided by Public Health England in how it responds to this.

He says the budget will set out measures being taken to respond to coronavirus. He says people on “all types of contracts” will get the protection they need, and that no one who does the right thing, and stays at home, will be penalised.

• Johnson signals that sick pay will be extended to the self-employed during the coronavirus outbreak.

Here are some more lines from Michael Gove’s evidence to the Commons Brexit committee.

• Gove said it might not be possible to conclude a security deal with the EU by the end of this year.

• He said that smaller British boats would get more fishing quota under the government’s plans for fisheries.

• He insisted that Boris Johnson would stick to his promise not to extend the post-Brexit transition.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, has just started giving evidence to the Commons Brexit committee, or the committee on the future relationship with the EU, to give it its proper name. There is a live feed here.

• Gove said that the next round of trade talks with the EU, which were due to start on 18 March (a week today) might have to be cancelled because of coronavirus.

• He refused to confirm that there would be extra checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland protocol agreed by the UK and the EU. The EU says the protocol does require extra checks. But Gove claimed that this would be a matter for the joint committee, the body that is being set up to oversee implementation of the protocol. Gove will represent the UK on the committee, which will meet for the first time on 30 March.

He also said that he wanted to develop the protocol.

• Gove claimed it would be possible to complete a trade deal with the EU and a trade deal with the US by the end of this year.

• He firmly ruled out extending the transition period. Asked about this, he said:

There won’t be any extension to the deadline.

• He said that, although the UK is drawing up a draft trade deal with the EU, he could not say when it would be published.

• He said the UK would not be publishing an economic impact assessment of a trade deal with the EU.

• He rejected claims that the UK was walking away from the commitments it made in the political declaration.

There is a live feed of the hearing here.

Sir Ed Davey, the acting Lib Dem leader, has strongly criticised a reported plan to install Chris Grayling, the Tory former transport secretary, as chair of the intelligence and security committee. No 10 chooses members of the ISC. The committee itself then elects its chair but, according to Tom Newton Dunn in the Sun, Boris Johnson plans to appoint Tory members on condition that they will back Grayling for the chairmanship. Newton Dunn says Theresa Villiers, the former environment secretary, and Sir John Hayes are also being offered membership.

In a statement Davey said:

The intelligence and security committee does crucial work holding the government and security services to account. It scrutinises evidence deemed too sensitive for the rest of us to see. The public needs to have confidence that the committee is independent of government.

Installing a lackey of the prime minister – especially one with as little credibility as Chris Grayling – badly undermines that confidence.

Principled Conservative MPs should refuse to go along with this latest authoritarian move.

No 10 has refused to comment on the Sun report, although sources say that the final decision about the committee’s membership have not yet been taken.

Downing Street has just sent out this read-out from today’s cabinet meeting. A No 10 spokesperson said:

Cabinet received an update from the health secretary and the prime minister on the coronavirus outbreak. The PM wished Nadine Dorries a speedy recovery, noting that she was following official advice to self-isolate.

The chancellor set out the measures being taken to manage the impact of coronavirus, laying out details of his economic action plan that will be announced at budget.

He outlined how this plan – combined with the measures announced by the governor of the Bank of England this morning – will make the UK one of the best placed economies in the world to manage the potential impact of the virus. The chancellor added the budget will ensure businesses, the public and those in public services working on the front line against the virus get the support they need.

He said despite the impacts of the outbreak being uncertain, we have the economic tools to overcome the disruption caused by the virus and move the country forwards.

The chancellor also said that despite coronavirus being “front and centre in our minds”, the budget will implement the manifesto on which the government had been elected. He said it was vital that people know this is a budget that delivers on the promises made to the British people – investing in public services and cutting taxes for millions of hardworking people – and that there could be no delay in laying the foundations for a decade of growth where opportunity was spread equally across the UK.

The PM said that this budget starts to tackle head on the challenges facing our economy and country – addressing productivity and regional imbalances – and showing that the government is responding to the public’s desire for change. It will set the path for further action through the year.

Rory Stewart, the former Tory cabinet minister who is now running as an independent candidate for London mayor, has said that the government should ban large gatherings in the light of the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak. That includes in parliament, where this afternoon’s budget should be delivered online, he says.

Earlier this week Stewart called for schools to be shut now because of coronavirus. Ministers argue that if they introduce these “social distancing” measures too early people will be starting to ignore them just at the moment when the outbreak is reaching its peak. At the moment there are relatively few high-profile political figures like Stewart criticising the government for being complacent, although this could change quite quickly.

It’s budget day, but never in living memory has a budget felt so cursed. Originally this budget was provisionally scheduled for the last week of October 2019, with Sajid Javid planning to deliver it if parliament passed a Brexit deal. Then Javid announced that there was going to be a budget on 6 November. That did not happen, because Brexit was delayed and MPs voted for a general election, but during the campaign the Tories promised that, if they won, during their first 100 days in office there would be a “post-Brexit budget in February which will cut taxes for hardworking families”. But the scale of the Tory election victory meant Boris Johnson started planning a more extensive budget than originally envisaged, and when Javid finally announced the date of the first post-election budget, he said it would not be in February, but on 11 March. Despite having twice announced dates for the budget, Javid never got to deliver it because he resigned in the February reshuffle, becoming the first chancellor since Iain Macleod, who died in office in 1970, never to deliver a budget.

Javid was replaced by the 39-year-old chief secretary to the Treasury. He is the most inexperienced minister to hold this office in modern times (which is not the same at all as the least able) and this afternoon he will deliver a budget in extraordinary circumstances. An announcement planned as being all about the end of austerity, and an infrastructure spending splurge, particularly aimed at towns and regions that voted Tory for the first time in 2019, will be judged predominantly by whether it is seen as a credible response to the coronavirus emergency.

Here are some of our preview articles.

• Larry Elliott and Ben Quinn say Sunak will pledge billions of pounds to ease the strain on the NHS as it tackles the Covid-19 outbreak.

• Heather Stewart says Sunak will promise “historic” investment in roads, railways, broadband and scientific research in his first budget, as the government tries to deliver on its promise to level up the UK.

• Richard Partington explains what to expect using five charts.

To coincide with the budget, the Bank of England has this morning announced an emergency 0.5% interest rate cut. My colleague Graeme Wearden is covering this on his business live blog, which is currently focusing on the Bank of England press conference that has just started.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.

11am: Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office committee, gives evidence to the Commons Brexit committee.

12pm: Boris Johnson faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.

12.30pm: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, delivers the budget.

3pm: Robert Chote, chair of the Office of Budget Responsibility, holds a post-budget press conference.

Mostly I will be focusing on the budget today, although I will be also be covering PMQs as usual, and Michael Gove at the Brexit committee. My colleague Graeme Wearden will be helping out with the budget coverage, and we plan to post a summary when I wrap up.

You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.

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