And this budget is an example. Nick watt reports. We havent quite heard the first cuckoo, but spring will soon be upon us. As the buds slowly sprout, its time to prepare for future climates, both sunny and chilly. That was the spirit Philip Hammond invoked in the lead up to the budget. Expect to prepare for troubled times as the uk leads the eu. It actually turned out that spreadsheet phil is so comfortable in his dream job that we witnessed gag a minute phil as he cracked a joke about the last chancellor, who announced the demise of the Spring Budget. The treasury has helpfully reminded me that i am not the first chancellor to announce the last Spring Budget. 2a years ago, Norman Lamont also presented what was billed then as the last Spring Budget. What they fail to remind me, mr deputy speaker, was that ten weeks later he was sacked laughter so wish me luck today ah, a chancellor who thinks he can deliver a deadly serious budget whilst lightening the mood with some gags at the expense of, well, almost everyone. What could possibly go wrong . When a chancellor faces a continuing hole in the public finances and pressing demands for extra spending, they have to take the tricky step of raising taxes. So why not ask the Self Employed to pay a little more in National Insurance contributions to bring them into line with the rest of the workforce . All so simple, given that they will be benefiting from the new State Pension. All so simple on a treasury spreadsheet. Not so simple when your general Election Manifesto said precisely the opposite. The alternative to that plan is actually putting up taxes, and i dont want to do that. No increase in National Insurance, no National Insurance rise. That is our vow. I read the manifesto, as you would expect, since the budget, to have a look at the precise wording and to try and see if there is any way of getting out of the pledge. And as far as i can tell there isnt. It didnt take long for the Sleuths Of Westminster to turn up tory election tweets, pledging no increase in National Insurance contributions and taunts about how labour was bound to do just that. They have quite blatantly broken their manifesto pledge. Lets remember, theyve got form for this. They told us before 2010 that they werent going to reorganise the nhs, and then as soon as they got into power they organised the biggest reorganisation that the nhs has ever seen. I was flabbergasted at todays Announcement Doing to increase National Insurance the Self Employed people. I think it is catastrophic. One of the traditions of Budget Day Briefing by treasury officials outside the Commons Chamber shortly after the childless is down. Todays briefing was a less confident affair, as the chancellors staff struggled to explain how he had not breached the tory Election Manifesto. They attempted to justify the move by saying that legislation implementing the Election Tax Commitment had pledged not to raise National Insurance contributions, or nics in the jargon on employees. It was silent on the Self Employed. The Nics Shambles was coined not by me but in our office. It is clearly a betrayal of many people who supported the conservative party, people who were Self Employed, whatever age they might be, people perhaps who after the crash in 2008 found themselves out of work from an employer and chose to make their own lot and set up their own business. And they are the kind of people who the government should be thankful to. They kept the unemployment figures lower than they were going to be. Budget day would not be complete without protesters complaining that their demands have not been met. Any grief this Chancellor Experiences with tax rises will illustrate his central dilemma. In an uncertain time, he still needs to raise revenue. The new cash will help as he injects an extra £2 billion into social care. It is extremely welcome and very important. I was absolutely astonished by the chancellors figure of i think 2. 5 million more people aged over 75 since 2010. 2010 isnt that long ago. I really didnt know the scale of the problem was as big as that. Labour was unimpressed. I think the most worrying thing today was that the chancellor proposed a £2 billion injection into health and social care over three years. That isnt going to even touch the sides. We have an nhs and social care system in a state of extreme crisis, and we have been told that it needs between £8 billion and £15 billion by 2020s. In the chancellors mind, last Spring Budget should have been something of a holding operation. It is when the days are closing that he will do the heavy lifting in his first autumn budget, by which time he can assess the first stage of the brexit talks. Spring may appear a long way off by then. And nick watt is here. Nick, this kind of erupted into quite a controversy through the afternoon, this National Insurance, this nics thing. You have detected some unease among ministers . Yes, you heard tim farron was very proud of his joke of the day. A none too subtle reference to George OsbornesOmnishambles Budget of 2012, that fuss over pasty tax. I dont think we are at that level of a shambles. Nevertheless there is concern among ministers. 0ne minister said to me that the chancellor had been too confident in all those gags he was making. Also this minister said to me, look, the chancellor has really undermined the tories traditional reputation as the party of the entrepreneur, the party of the Self Employed. This minister said to me, we are shooting our own people. And i was told that this idea is going down like a lead balloon on the backbenches. There will be blowback, this minister told me. I was told the government really needs to do a betterjob in admitting that it broke its Election Manifesto, concede and move on, and then there might be some space for the government to explain the merits in this change. Thanks, nick. The Chief Secretary to the treasury is with me. Do you concede you broke the pledge in the manifesto . No, i dont, actually. You just run through the history of this. In the march budget, before the general election, the then chancellor George Osborne said that we were looking to abolish class two nics and reform class four nics. The manifesto talked about not increasing income tax, vat and nics. But by value, 93 of nics is class one, that is employers and employees nics. Those are the main rates, and thats what we focus on and legislate on. Do you regret putting it in the manifesto . In the words that you did on page three, we will not raise vat, National Insurance contributions or income tax. Or, as you put on page seven, we commit to no increases in vat, National Insurance contributions or income tax. I will go on to explain what we have to support this. We focused on the main rates, which is employers and employees. It didnt say main rates. Weve said contributions. It implied you would not pay more. You said it on page 27, you said it quite a few times. A conservative government will not increase the rates. That time you said rates, previously you said insurance. Nowhere did you say class one. You had it in the front, the back and the middle, but you did not say, by the way, we may reform class two and class four, but the class one rate will not change. We were staying at that time that we were not going to abolish. Can ijust make this point . The reason why in a way theres a surprise that there is a controversy over this, we took the legislation through, and at that point the legislation was absolutely explicit. We were talking about class one, which is by value 93 of nics. We didnt include class last two or class four. There were no complaints raised about that. The labour party said, you have enacted your nics tax proposal. We are entitled to look at what was in the manifesto and not to say, you retrospectively changed what you meant in the manifesto by a piece of legislation. As i say, it was an ongoing point, it was well known. Do you think that the pledge got you some votes when you won the election in 2015 . Do you think part of that was because you made some pledge on no tax rises . I think in terms of a commitment that we were not going to be increasing vat, income tax or National Insurance. All contributions. For the majority fo people, 93 of value is about class one. Did it help you win the election . I think in terms of. Its very difficult to say. But, look, i think in terms of the fact that we have said we are not a government that is going to be increasing income tax, vat, or those. Most people, when we had this debate, we would talking about employees National Insurance. You said it five times in your manifesto. The labour party did not have any objection, nor did anybody in parliament. Will there be a u turn on this . Clearly theres unease among your colleagues and backbenchers, a lot of people dont like it. Can you see this, as in the Omnishambles Budget, there were reverses . No, and the reason why, people do understand the fairness point. That at a time when. Unlike what has happened in the past, when essentially the benefits that the Self Employed receive for their contributions, are largely the same as employed people do. It is wrong that employed people pay a lot more in National Insurance contributions. That gap should be narrowed. Not eliminated, but that gap should be narrowed. I think that Fairness Argument is one that we obviously need to make and we need to go out there, there will be people who need to be persuaded. But its not about being anti Self Employed. We have done a lot for the Self Employed. For example, the Self Employed now get the full State Pension, the new State Pension is worth £1800 per year. That will require saving Something Like 50 £50,000 worth to benefit from that. That was not the case in the past. We are looking at paternity and maternity. Interesting, most of the experts you hear will say it is a perfectly sensible tax change, but this is about the principle of the manifesto. So lets focus on the manifesto. In many respects, your manifesto was criticised at the time for Unanswered Questions about how you would deliver the cuts and budget you promised. At the time, we can make this commitment on vat and National Insurance. Tax rises for hard working people. Insurance. Tax rises for ha rd working people. We insurance. Tax rises for hard working people. We want to reduce wasteful spending, making savings in welfare and cracking down on tax evasion. Thats how you are going to achieve a balanced budget. You have failed to do it in these respects and people said you were going to fail. They said you havent got a plane and you didnt have a plan. What are we meant to do now when your own government, you run the election, on the basis of a ma nifesto the election, on the basis of a manifesto and not just the election, on the basis of a manifesto and notjust National Insurance but the whole Financial Plan . We talk about tax evasion and we have done a lot in terms of what you see as tax evasion. But we are not even close to where we want to be. In the Election Campaign you said we were five days away from National Debt starting to come down. It is not coming down, we are still 370 days away from that coming down. Runs through the three. No, you promised a balanced budget by 2018. We dont need to go back to the manifesto and look at the National Insurance pledge to see the whole thing was a charade. What are we meant to do with parties that go into an election saying stuff that sounds good and then not delivering . If i may answer, if thats all right. Run through the particular elements. I accept that there are some challenges we face in the public finances, and we discussed last time i was on this programme why the 0br downgraded some of the Tax Receipt Numbers they had and the growth and so on. But if we look in terms of what we are getting an tax evasion, hmrc is more successful than its ever been. So you claim that you have delivered on the manifesto . When it comes to delivering on welfare reforms, we have found £12. 5 billion on welfare. And when it comes on public spending, evan, actually in the last parliament we delivered on our public spending. So your manifesto said from 2019 after a surplus has been achieved, spending will grow in line with national income. Can you make that pledge now . No, the pledge is to cut spending in 2019 and to do so quite severely. There have been changes in the economic circumstances which you and i discussed in some length when i was here in november after the Autumn Statement, and that has created some challenges for the public finances. There are also some longer term structural issues with tax receipts and getting that money coming in, which comes back to some of the measures in todays budget, which we are seeking to address, so we have got Sustainable Tax base, so we can afford to pay for the Public Services that we need. Economists at the time of your tax pledge criticised, hit out at the proposals to ban tax rises as undermining fiscal credibility and leaving little flexibility to deal with shocks. You have just described a load of shocks. And you didnt have the flexability to deal with them. You now to say that pledges like, we are not going to raise any major tax like you gave in the last election, those are thing of the past, they were a mistake . We will revisit that issue as we get closer to the next general election. What are we meant to do if you say it next time . That is a matter for some time down the line. I think it was pretty clear that when we fought the last general election, our opponents would have been much more willing to raise taxes. If you come back in 2020 and say we are not going to raise taxes and National Insurance, can we believe you . What are we meant to do . I come back to the point that we legislated for these measures, we complied with that legislation. I come back to the point, last time i was here, you were saying, you are failing to cut spending this year. One of the things that has come through from todays numbers is we are succeeding in reducing spending this year, and if we can continue at that rate, we will meet our Spending Plans in this parliament in the same way that we met them in the last parliament. Thank you very much indeed. Well, lets see how the budget is going down outside westminster. Just some background here one reason for the buoyant economy over the last year is that households have carried on spending, notwithstanding the warnings of economists them about how bad brexit could be. So, are people confident about their own finances . 0rjust desperate . And is the chancellor seen as a safe pair of hands . Well, naga has been finding out. Brentwood, essex. A thriving suburban town just outside the london commuter belt, edged with rolling countryside. Population, circa 50,000. 59 of whom voted for brexit last year. 0nce home to the chancellor. This is the street Philip Hammond grew up on, and we are here to find out if those locally think their boy has done good with his first, and last, Spring Budget. And whether todays announcements will help make their lives better. Christine bennett, a teaching assistant and local school governor. She used to live next door to the man who now holds the red box. We played out a lot together. We always played out in the street. We walked to school together, we walked home together. Yes, it was fun, just a fun childhood. I think hes doing all right. I mean, its early days. Id like, well, i said education, a bit more money into Primary School education. A bit more money into the nhs. Today, he has said that he will put doctors, gps, into the a e departments, and that would help, i suppose. But thats not going to go in for a year. Were short of gps anyway, so i dont know where hes going to find them from. Theres more confidence in the chancellor a few doors down. Brian soulsby, retired. Voted to leave the eu. Thinks mr hammond is the right man to steer the uk economy. I know they call him, is It Spreadsheet phil . Which is not a bad idea for a chancellor. You actually want somebody whos good with numbers. Hes done a sensible budget to start with, with room to manoeuvre if things keep going as they do t