Andy Verity
BBC Economics correspondent

Rishi Sunak's given himself a relatively low hurdle to jump with his new Fiscal Charter rule on getting the national debt down.

The goal is to see it falling, as a percentage of GDP, excluding what the government owes to the Bank of England.

On the last official figures in September, the net debt was already falling as a percentage of GDP. And most of the money borrowed since the pandemic is owed to the Bank of England.

So there'd be nothing in the new rules to stop him borrowing pandemic-style amounts (£300bn anyone?) once again under the new rules.

Simon Jack
BBC Business Editor

Image source, Getty Images

The two most eye-catching measures in the Budget are a 50% cut in business rates for hospitality for one year - which is worth £1.7bn - and a change in the business rates multiplier, which will lower business rates bills by just under £1bn a year.

It is a total tax cut of £7bn over five years.

There will be some celebrating in the pub sector as they are also toasting a cut in beer duty sold on premises and wider reforms that will see alcohol taxed by alcohol volume rather than by product category.

This was a surprise and will be very welcome in the hospitality sector.

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

Last year the chancellor promised science spending would be increased to £22bn a year by 2024-25.

Now he’s pushed it back by two years to after the next general election, (due in 2024) when someone else might have his job and take a different view.

But Sunak has agreed to increase spending to £20bn by 2024. That is less than the scientific community hoped for, but more than some had feared.

The initial feeling among the science world’s movers and shakers is that given the financial pressures the Chancellor faces, this is not a bad outcome for UK research.

Crucially, they still have a firm timetable and an upward trajectory for science spending.

And that, they say, sends out a clear message to the private sector and overseas scientists and businesses thinking of coming to Britain, that the government is still on track to deliver on its commitment to make the country into a science superpower.

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

The Leader of the Scottish National Party at Westminster, Ian Blackford, is now offering his party's response.

He has also picked up on the cut in Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights - which the government sees as a plank of what it calls its "levelling up" agenda, and its desire to glue the nations of the UK together, the exact opposite of the SNP's dream of Scottish independence

Blackford tells MPs that carbon dioxide emissions per mile flown are higher on domestic flights than they are on international ones.

"What on earth are we doing?" he asks.

Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

Image source, Reuters

The UK can’t meet its climate change targets without insulating leaky homes, but there was no mention of renovation in the Budget statement.

The Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group estimates that £10bn is needed over the next three years for installing heat pumps and making homes cosy.

The government’s advisory Climate Change Committee has urged the Treasury to explain how the money would be found.

But there was no mention of this. Indeed, there was no mention of climate change at all… on the eve of the vital Glasgow climate summit.

You can find our coverage in the run up to COP26 here.

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

It's regularly said that being Leader of the Opposition is the hardest job in politics.

And it is - usually - the job of the Leader of the Opposition to respond to the Budget, on the fly.

The Chancellor sits down, and it is showtime, cobbling together a response to something you have just heard, notes being passed along the front bench from a team of advisers crunching numbers somewhere nearby.

But today, there is no Labour leader around - because Sir Keir Starmer has Covid.

So that devilish job fell to Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor.

Central to her message was what she saw as the gap between the optimism and boosterish instincts of the government, and the huge cost of living questions confronting many families.

Some families, businesses and those using public services will not recognise the UK described by the chancellor in his Budget, Labour said in its response to Sunak's statement. Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor and standing in for Keir Starmer, claimed a chancellor had never asked British people “to pay so much for so little”.

Rob Young
Business presenter

Image source, Getty Images

Fascinating announcement - given the upcoming COP26 summit - that flights between airports in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be subject to a new lower rate of Air Passenger Duty (APD) from April 2023.

APD is charged per passenger flying from a UK airport domestically and abroad and is currently £13 per passenger for short-haul flights and £82 long-haul.

This cut is good news for struggling regional airports.

But will the move encourage more flying internally when we‘re supposed to be cutting carbon emissions?

If you missed it earlier, the chancellor said flights between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have a lower rate of Air Passenger Duty from April 2023.

The issue of flights and their contribution to global warming is bound to be a key topic at the COP26 climate change conference which begins in Glasgow this weekend.

Image source, HoC

Reeves says there are some "welcome measures" in the Budget, namely the increase in the National Living Wage.

But she says the government "needs to go further and faster" and follow Labour's policy of making it £10 per hour.

The shadow chancellor also praises the end of the "punitive" public sector pay freeze, but says she knows "how much the chancellor likes his smoke and mirrors" - so she and her team will be "checking the books".

But when it comes to universal credit, Reeves says it still leaves people in a "cost of living crisis", with no help to pay for rising energy prices over the winter.

She also questions Sunak's green credentials, saying he only made "passing references" to the climate issue, leaving the UK "burdened with a chancellor unwilling to meet challenges we face".

"Everywhere people look, they see prices going up, shortages on the shelves and the spiralling cost of living", says Reeves.

She condemns the Budget as "a shocking missed opportunity from a government completely out of touch".

Image source, HoC

Rachel Reeves says the UK does not have world-class public services.

She asks if the Conservatives have heard of the Sure Start programme, which Labour introduced to help children in early years.

She asks why taxpayers' money is being spent on tax breaks for Amazon? "Why can't Britain do better than this?" she asks.

She says the government is blaming global problems for issues in the economy here.

"Working people are being asked to pay more for less," she says.

"Under the Conservatives, the UK has become a low-growth economy," when the UK could have had "an additional £30bn" without having to raise taxes if the country had the economic growth of other major nations.

"The Conservatives are the party of high taxation because the Conservatives are the party of low growth," she says.

She says the prime minister "dithered and delayed" on Covid restrictions, meaning that the country has the highest death toll in Europe while also having the lowest economic recovery.

She says the government has spent so much on Covid contracts to Tory party donors that taxes are now having to be raised on working families.

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After Sunak's hour and 10 minutes at the dispatch box, it is now time for Labour to have their say.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says struggling families and businesses will think Rishi Sunak is "living in a parallel universe" and not recognise the world he describes.

She attacks a cut in tax for banks, saying: "At least the bankers on short haul flights sipping champagne will be cheering this budget today."

And she hits out at the "arrogance" of her opposite number for "taking £6bn out of the pockets of the poorest people" in scrapping the universal credit uplift, then "expecting them to cheer today for £2bn to compensate".

Reeves adds: "Never has a chancellor asked the British people to pay so much for so little."

So where is the spending going according to the Budget today? Here's some of what we learnt:

• Scottish government funding is up by £4.6bn, Welsh government funding by £2.5bn, and £1.6bn for the Northern Ireland Executive, via the Barnett formula
• Community football pitches, youth clubs, regional theatres and museums are among organisations who will benefit from new money aimed at "levelling up" the UK
• £21bn on roads and £46bn on railways, and a guarantee to spend £5.7bn for London-style transport systems across city regions
• Spending on cycling infrastructure of more than £5bn, the same funds will also be spent on local minor roads
• Lower rates of Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights only to boost local airports "and bring people together across the UK"; but higher passenger duty for flights over 5,500 miles
• £24bn is earmarked for housing: £11.5bn to build up to 180,000 affordable homes, with brownfield sites targeted for development; £5bn for the removal of unsafe cladding for the highest risk buildings
• £300m towards A Start for Life, supporting new parents and £150m for Early Years training and holiday programmes, on top of the previously announced funding for Family Hubs
• A further £2bn more funding for schools "to support education recovery" - with an extra £4.7bn promised by 2024-25
• 20,000 new police officers, an extra £2.2bn for courts and rehab facilities and £3.8bn for prison-building
• The planned rise in fuel duty will be cancelled
• A new 50% business rates discount for companies in the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors, lasting for one year.
• Duty of draught beer and sparkling wine is also cut
• On Universal credit, the chancellor confirms that he will cut the taper rate from 63% to 55%

Read our at-a-glance guide here.

Rishi Sunak says jobs, growth and wages are all up, and there will be a pay rise for more than two million people.

At the same time, the government will be investing in infrastructure and skills, he states.

Public finances will be "back in a better place" and the Budget helps with working families, he says.

He says the Budget will build a stronger economy for British people.

He sits down, to cheers from Conservatives and shouts of "more" from backbench Tory MPs.

On public sector pay, Rishi Sunak says those workers will "see fair, and affordable" pay rises across the next few years, which will return to being made independently.

The government is accepting the recommendation to make the living wage £9.50 an hour, which will produce a raise for those workers of £1,000 a year, he says.

"This is a major commitment to the high wage, high skill, high productivity economy of the future," he says.

Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies has said the living wage rise will only equate to around £700 after taxes, external, and will be even less for those on Universal Credit.

Sunak says he wants to live in a society that rewards work and his final announcement "takes a first step" towards that.

"For many of the lowest paid in society, there is a hidden tax on work" he says in the form of the universal credit taper, which withdraws support as people work more hours.

He says he has decided to cut this rate by 8%, from 63 to 55% and the changes will take effect within weeks.

It's a tax cut next year worth over £2bn he says that will "benefit nearly two million families who will keep, on average, an extra £1,000 a year" he says.

He says a single mother of two, renting, and working full-time on the National Living Wage will be better off by around £1,200 and a couple, renting a home with their two children, one working full-time, the other working part-time, will be better off by £1,800 a year.

You can read more about the current taper rate here

The chancellor says the UK showed it could "pull together as a country" during the pandemic, "putting aside questions of ideology and orthodoxy to do whatever it took to care for our people and each other".

But he said there was a "different moral dimension" going forward.

"Taxes are rising to their highest level as a percentage of GDP since the early 1950s. I don’t like it, but I cannot apologise for it – it’s the result of the unprecedented crisis we faced and the extraordinary action we took in response.

"But now, we have a choice. Do we want to live in a country where the response to every question is what is the government going to do about it?"

He says the government "should have limits", and as a result, his goal is to reduce taxes by the end of this Parliament.

Sunak adds: "I want taxes to be going down not up. I want this to be a society that rewards energy, ingenuity and inventiveness. A society that rewards work."

Sunak confirms that he will cut the universal credit taper rate from 63% to 55%.

The chancellor says it will be introduced by no later than 1 December.

As expected, Sunak has announced a cut to the bank surcharge that was introduced in 2015 by George Osborne.

Banks pay a surcharge of 8% on their profits, on top of the current 19% corporation tax. With corporation tax now set to rise to 25%, that would mean banks would be paying 33%.

But Sunak's announcement - of a cut to the surcharge to 3% - means they will pay 28% tax.