The reaction to today’s budget in the financial markets is quite muted.

Although building firms have been hit by the threatened clampdown on land banks, the FTSE 100 actually ended the day up 0.1%. The pound also shrugged off the growth downgrades, it’s up half a cent against the US dollar and flat against the euro.

Why?

Because the OBR’s new downgraded growth forecasts basically tell the City what it already knew - the UK’s economy faces a challenging few years, and the productivity puzzle remains unsolved, despite the measures Hammond announced today.

The OBR hasn’t thrown in the towel completely on productivity. Its new forecasts are mid-way between the good old days before the crisis, and the sloth-like progress since.

But there’s still a lot of uncertainty about whether technology improvements will actually deliver productivity benefits in the years ahead. And without it, Britain will keep racking up debts...

Richard Buxton, head of UK equities at investment manager Old Mutual, argues that little has changed economically today.

Hammond may have used a little sleight of hand (the reclassification of housing associations being an obvious example) to give himself a little headroom at this juncture.

In practice, however, he appears to have kept the vast majority of his powder dry, cognisant that there may well be a time, as Brexit approaches, when more radical action is merited.

The history books may also record today as the moment that the government gave up making a profit on the bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland. Selling that stake will help cut the national debt by £15bn, but will also crystallise a lose of around £26bn (based on today’s share price).

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable says it’s a “desperate” move.

Lib Dem leader Vince Cable urged caution after the budget revealed plans put a deadline on when the government will start selling its £24bn stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, by March 2019. Cable said the share price meant it was the wrong time to sell the shares at their current price. He told reporters:

Today’s share price I believe is far below the acquisition price and we always argued in the coalition. Osborne accepted it was utterly wrong to start selling shares before you can recoup the basic taxpayer outlay and then you have to allow for a bit of inflation.

So that would be rather desperate I think. And we know there are these continuing legacy problems around RBS. This is not the time to sell the shares in RBS.

The former business secretary said the chancellor had been severely restricted by the downgrading of the growth figures and the unexpected rise in borrowing, which he estimated would cost every person £700 per year compared to pre-election forecast.

The chancellor talked about Britain being the sixth biggest economy in the world, as long as I can remember it was the fifth, but it is now the sixth. This is France overtaking the UK in the last year, India is fairly close behind.

Cable, who said he backed much of what the government was doing on skills and industrial strategy, also expressed concern about the £3bn allocated to Brexit preparations.

The fact they are having to pay that upfront on the possibility we will crash out is revealing and politically very damaging.

The £3bn does not deal with the massive economic dislocation of Brexit, which is multiple many times that. This is the physical infrastructure costs associated with the change in the regulatory regime, it’s a tiny fraction of the costs associated with Brexit.

Here are some more budget tweets worth reading.

From Sky’s Ed Conway

From the Resolution Foundation

From Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics

Philip Hammond’s threat to force property developers sitting on undeveloped land to use it or lose it may have sounded familiar.

Not for the first time, it’s an idea previously pushed by Ed Miliband during his time as Labour leader. Back in 2013, Boris Johnson rubbished the idea, writing:

We need to help people with the cost of housing; but that means building hundreds of thousands of homes – homes for sale, for affordable rent, for private rent.

But you won’t get developers risking their cash to build, if they are told they are vulnerable to Mugabe-style expropriations and a new mansion tax.

But Mugabe is now (finally) out of office, and the Conservatives have now decided that “Red Ed” was onto something after all (see also: energy price caps).

Miliband himself is taking the u-turn in his stride.

And this is from the Guardian’s Alan Travis.

Here is a round-up of reaction to the budget from Tory MPs.

These are from the Guardian’s Helen Pidd.

NIESR, the think tank, has warned that today’s budget forecasts will be too optimistic if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.

The uncertainty around Brexit presents the most important downside near term risk to the economy, particularly in the event of an exit involving a sudden stop, while the judgments on productivity and employment are likely to represent the most significant upside risk to productivity, as well as the prospects for a sustained world recovery.

Angela Rafferty QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, has criticised a planned £600m cut to the Ministry of Justice’s budget. She said:

The poor and vulnerable in society are being denied access to justice. Whilst the official budget statement is silent about this vital pillar of state we can see from the spending forecast that there will be a £600m reduction in an already meagre and inadequate budget for the ministerial department, a reduction for the Ministry of Justice resource budget of 9% over two years to £6bn by 2019/20. The budget for justice is now forecast to fall an initial £400m next year from £6.6bn in 2017/18 to £6.2bn in 2018/19, then to £6bn for 2019/20. The system is desperate; it cannot endure any more cuts.

Today’s budget hasn’t delivered the wealth redistribution from Baby Boomers to Millennials that some campaigners had been pushing for.

Our money editor Patrick Collinson says:

We expected a budget that would take from the old and give to the young.

What we got was one that gave a few well-signalled bungs to the middle-aged (higher tax thresholds), some giveaways to the youngish (stamp duty cuts, a new railcard) and left the elderly untouched. And as for the very rich? Well, they’re still living in paradise.

Philip Hammond is no intergenerational Robin Hood. While he slashed stamp duty for almost every first-time buyer (outside London) he conspicuously avoided provoking older voters; pension tax reliefs remain sacrosanct, as does the winter fuel allowance and the “triple lock” on pension increases.....

More here:

This is how George Osborne’s Evening Standard is covering the budget.

My colleague Alan Travis points out that the section in the budget red book on what the government will do to attract “international talent” after Brexit suggests the new immigration rules will be less restrictive than the proposals leaked earlier this year implied.

Today’s growth downgrades mean Britain will be sending less aid to the developing world, through the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid.

The budget Red Book says that Official Development Assistance (ODA) budgets will be adjusted down by £375 million in 2018‑19 and £520 million in 2019‑20.

As we pointed out earlier, the budget scorecard shows that Philip Hammond has planned a £9bn spending splurge in 2019-20. (See 2.18pm.) Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff for George Osborne when Osborne was chancellor, thinks he knows why.

Here are some tweets from Matt Whittaker, the Resolution Foundation’s chief economist, on the budget.

Here is the response to the budget from John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. And here is an excerpt.

This is a ‘nothing has changed’ budget from an out-of-touch Government with no idea of the reality of people’s lives and no plan to improve them.

Philip Hammond has completely failed to recognise the scale of the emergency in our public services.

Today’s budget has found no meaningful funding for our schools still facing their first real terms funding cuts since the mid-90s and nothing even approaching the scale needed to address the crisis in our NHS or local government.

One campaign group has cast doubt on the government’s ability to enforce laws to make Amazon and eBay pay for VAT fraud, as promised in the budget.

Richard Allen, the spokesperson for Retailers Against VAT Abuse Schemes, which first exposed the issue, said the government is yet to prove that it is capable of enforcing new laws on digital giants. He said:

The government says it will make it easier for HMRC to prosecute Amazon and eBay for facilitating this activity. But we haven’t seen the wording yet of the legislation and so we can’t be sure as to how precise it will be or if it will leave a loophole which can be exploited by these giant companies’ lawyers.

These firms have already admitted they knew about the VAT fraud, so why bother with the proposed legislation? Prof Rita de la Feria, professor of tax law at Leeds University, told the public accounts committee that new legislation was not necessary, it was an issue of enforcement. She was right.

The Scottish government says Scotland has been short-changed by the budget. Here is an extract from the statement from Derek Mackay, the Scottish government’s finance minister.

Scotland’s resource block grant for day to day spending will fall by over £200m in real terms next year and while money for the NHS in England should see a proportionate share come to Scotland, cuts in other UK departments mean that instead of receiving over £30m this year the Scottish Government will receive only £8m - a fraction of that spending.

The reality is that over £1.1bn of the money being promised to Scotland over the next four years are loans that the Scottish government cannot spend directly on frontline public services and that have to be paid back to the Treasury.

Austerity has not ended and over ten years of this UK Government, between 2010-11 and 2019-20, we will continue to see Scotland’s discretionary budget fall in real terms by £2.6bn, that’s 8.1%.

This is what a Guardian Comment panel are saying about the budget. There are contributions from Matthew d’Ancona, Faiza Shaheen, Jonathan Freedland and Frances Ryan.

Ouch! The OBR has also estimated that selling the government’s shares in RBS will realise a loss of £26.2bn.

That’s based on today’s share price, compared to the cost of the bailout nine years ago.

The budget ‘red book’ also shows that the government plans to sell the mortgages held by Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock (which were both rescued during the height of the crisis in 2008) over the next few years, to cut the national debt.

This is from the Labour MP Stella Creasy.

This is not entirely fair. If you look at the scorecard (see 2.18pm), you will see that the extra spending on Brexit contingency planning is worth £1.5bn a year for two years (item 20), but in those two years the combined extra NHS spending is £2.32bn and £1.91bn respectively (items 8 and 9). But, by referring to the headline figures Hammond cited, Creasy makes a strong political point nevertheless.

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s verdict is out!

The independent watchdog confirms that it has cut its productivity and growth forecasts:

We have revised down our productivity and GDP forecasts and, despite lower borrowing this year, revised up our forecast for the budget deficit. The chancellor has raised the deficit further with higher public spending and a net tax giveaway.

This chart confirms that the deficit will be almost twice as big as previously forecast in 2021-22.

But what about the “tax giveaway”?

The OBR says Hammond is loosening the purse strings over the next two years, including the freeze on fuel duty and the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers on houses under £300k.

This is table 2.1 from the budget red book, the budget scorecard. This is the most important and revealing chart in the whole book, because these are the numbers that show exactly how much the Treasury is spending and raising from all the 69 measures in the budget.

Look at the figures at the bottom. These show that, overall, it’s a giveaway budget. In the next financial year Hammond will be spending an extra £6bn compared with what was planned (£4.4bn extra on spending, and £1.6bn extra on tax cuts) and by 2019-20 the giveaway is worth almost £10bn.

Shares in Britain’s housebuilders have been hit by Hammond’s threat to compulsorily purchase land if they don’t build on it.

Barratt, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley are leading the FTSE 100 fallers, suggesting the City thinks the measure may have teeth.

You can read all the Treasury documents on the Treasury website here.

The most important is the 86-page budget red book (pdf).

And here is the Office for Budget Responsibility’s 258-page report (pdf).

Jeremy Corbyn is responding to the budget now. He is withering, and particularly critical of the lack of extra spending on social care and education. We will publish lengthy extracts from his speech a bit later when we have the quotes.

Hammond did have a rabbit in the hat after all – the decision to abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers on properties up to £300,000 got a healthy roar from his own MPs.

Tom Tugendhat, for example:

But, it won’t help those who aren’t close to buying a house today (and might annoy anyone who just managed to scramble on to the housing ladder).

One million homes for the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor …

Hammond says the government is committing to building homes in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor. Infrastructure will be built to support new homes, he says.

Hammond turns to housing.

He says councils will be able to charge a 100% premium on council tax on empty properties.

He will establish a homelessness taskforce, with a view to eliminating rough sleeping by 2027.

Hammond turns to taxes for digital companies. He says income tax will be applied to sales abroad. He says all online market places will be jointly liable with sellers for VAT.

The Treasury has tweeted the details of the NHS funding changes (which seem to fall short of the £4bn emergency injection called for by the NHS England chief Simon Stevens).

Hammond says he has listened to concerns about the costs of uprating business rates.

He says he will bring forward the uplifting of this by the CPI inflation index not RPI. It will switch to CPI in April 2018, two years earlier than planned. That will save businesses £2.3bn, he says.

• Businesses to gain £2.3bn by change to rules for the uprating of business rates, Hammond says.

On the VAT registration threshold, he says, at £85,000, it is by far the highest in the OECD.

But that does keep most small businesses out of VAT, he says.

So he is not minded to lower it. But he will look at reforming it.

• Hammond says threshold for VAT registration to stay at £85,000 for the next two years. There had been speculation he would bring it down.

On alcohol duty, Hammond has outlined plans to increase duty on high-strength, low-quality alcohol from 2019, but duties on other ciders, wines, spirits and on beer will be frozen.

The decision to freeze fuel duty again has been criticised by the Green party co-leader Jonathan Bartley.

Hammond turns to health.

• NHS to get an extra £10bn capital investment over this parliament.

• And NHS to get an extra £3.75bn this year for its current budget. About £2.8bn will be for the NHS in England.

Hammond also says he will provide extra funding for NHS pay.

Hammond turns to duty.

• Duty on beer, wine, cider and spirits to be frozen.

And he turns to travel.

From April he will again freeze short-haul air passenger duty, and long-haul APD for economy passengers. This will be funded by an increase on taxes for private jets.

And the age limit for a young person’s railcard will go up.

The Treasury tweets:

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran says Hammond has heeded the complaints about universal credit.

Conservative MP Heidi Allen, who has also raised concerns about UC, has welcomed the move.

Hammond turns to tax thresholds.

• Basic rate income tax threshold to rise to £11,850 in April next year.

• Higher rate threshold to rise to £46,350.

Hammond turns to the “national living wage”.

From April [the national living wage] will rise 4.4% from £7.50 an hour to £7.83.

The government accepts the low pay commission’s recommendations.

Income inequality today is at its lowest level for 30 years.

The top 1% are paying more in income tax than at any time under Labour, he says.

Hammond says they will open talks on a Belfast city deal, with a view to having similar deals across Northern Ireland.

Hammond says his plans involve £2bn more for the Scottish government, £1.2bn more for Wales and £650m more for Northern Ireland.

He is used to getting his “ear bent” by the 13 Scottish Tory MPs, he says. They have persuaded him to exempt Police Scotland and the Scottish fire service from VAT.

Hammond says he is announcing £30m to improve digital connectivity on the trans-Pennine route.

He is announcing a new city deal for the West Midlands.

There will be an investment in Redcar.

More than £1bn of lending will be available to councils to fund high-investment projects.

Hammond says he and the education secretary will initiate a national retraining scheme.

He has accepted TUC advice to continue funding Unionlearn, he says.

He got an email from Len [McCluskey] asking him to do this, he jokes.

Hammond turns to teaching, and maths.

He announces measures to promote maths teaching. These plans were trailed overnight.

More maths for everyone, he says.

Don’t let anyone tell you I don’t know how to show the nation a good time.

The chancellor’s Top Gear/Grand Tour joke has attracted plenty of groans:

Hammond says he will explore new taxes on plastic waste. People have seen through the BBC’s Blue Planet 2 how much damage plastic does.

Hammond turns to driverless vehicles. He knows that Jeremy Clarkson does not like them. But there are other good reasons to pursue them too, he says.

I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I know it’s not the first time you’ve been snubbed by Hammond and May.

The law will be clarified so that people who charge their vehicles at work will not be taxed as a benefit in kind.

He says he announced previously that taxes on diesel cars would go up. This will go ahead. But new cars will be exempt will manufacturers introduce new technology.

And this will only hit cars, he says. So white van man will not be affected.

This will fund a £200m clean air fund.

Hammond says the government will replace European investment fund money if necessary.

Hammond says a new high-tech business is founded in the UK every hour. He wants that to be every half hour.

He says he is investing more than £500m “in a range of initiatives from artificial intelligence, to 5G and full fibre broadband”.

Hammond says the government is investing in infrastructure.

He says raising productivity is the central mission of the Treasury.

He is increasing the R&D tax credit, he says.

Hammond says the OBR says the government is on course to meet its fiscal targets.

Borrowing is forecast to be £49.9bn this year - £8.4bn lower than forecast in the spring budget.

It will fall to its lowest level in 20 years by 2022/23, he says.

In percentage terms, it is forecast to be 2.4% in 2017-18. Then 1.9%. then 1.6%, then 1.5%, then 1.3% and finally 1.1% in 2022-23.

Hammond says he intends to use the headroom he created in his first budget to reduce debt and provide help to families too.

Hammond says the OBR expects debt to peak this year.

But Labour wants higher debt.

If they carry on like that, there will be plenty more joining Kezia Dugdale in saying: “I’m Labour, get me out of here.”

Hammond says productivity has not improved.

For the last 15 budget events, the OBR has forecast productivity growth at 2%. But that has been revised downwards.

And so growth estimates have been revised down. They are now:

2017 - 1.5%

2018 - 1.4%

2019 - 1.3%

2020 - 1.3%

2021 - 1.5%

2022 - 1.6%

Hammond says the OBR is forecasting another 600,000 people in work by the 2020s.

Hammond says he will do the OBR forecasts now.

“This is the bit with the long, economicky words in it,” he says, joking about Michael Gove.

He will stick to drinking water, he says, although he is tempted by something more exotic, he says (referring to drink).

He asked the PM to bring some cough sweets just in case, he jokes.

Hammond says he has a clear vision of what a global Britain looks like: a prosperous and inclusive economy, where everyone can shine, and the dream of home ownership is open to all, a civilised, tolerant place, an outward-looking nation, that is a force for good in the world.

That is the Britain he wants, he says. He will not build it today. But he will build the foundations.

Hammond says he understands the frustration of families whose budgets are under pressure.

So he chooses a balanced approach, he says.

Hammond says the government chooses the future, and chooses “to run towards change”.

Britain is at the forefront of the technological revolution, he says.

But we must invest to secure that future. That is what he is doing, he says.

Hammond says the economy “continues to grow, continues to create more jobs than ever before and continues to confound those who talk it down”.

The future will be full of opportunities.

He wants to seize those opportunities, he says.

The Independent’s political editor, Joe Watts, spotted something interesting during PMQs...

Labour’s Yvette Cooper also wants to see Universal Credit reformed:

Labour’s Toby Perkins says people with severe disabilities are worse off on universal credit because there is no disability component. Whatever is in the budget, UC will shame the government, he says.

May says the government spends £50bn a year on disability benefits. UC is helping people get into work, she says.

Not long to wait now....

Corbyn says the government voted down an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill last night on workers’ rights. Turning to tax avoidance, he asks if May will adopt new measures on this. Or is she threatening to turn Britain into a tax haven?

May says she will take no lectures on this. The government has raised more than £160bn by measures on tax avoidance, she says.

Corbyn says David Cameron blocked EU proposals for a public register of tax. When it comes to Brexit, this government is a shambles, he says. The Tories promise action on tax avoidance. But they vote against it, he says. The government has no energy, no agreed plan and no strategy to deliver a good Brexit for Britain.

May says it was Labour that refused to allow tax avoidance measures to go through in a bill before the election. On Monday 76 Labour MPs voted in a different lobby from the front bench on customs measures, she claims.

May is wrong about that. The division list is here. There were 76 opposition MPs voting for the amendment, but around half of those were from the SNP. There were only 28 Labour MPs voting in favour, against the Labour whip which said they should abstain.

A thumbs-up for Jeremy Corbyn’s choice of question.....

Michel Barnier said bankers would lose their passports, says Corbyn. But David Davis has promised free movement for bankers. Who else will get free movement? Nurses?

May says Corbyn borrowed this question from Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader. There will be no immigration rules, she says. She says she wants to get on to deal with the future trading relationship. Labour cannot decide whether it wants to be in or out of the single market and customs union.

Corbyn says in April Davis said the European Banking Authority would stay in London. The government has voted down amendments that would protect workers’ rights. Why not?

May says the government has guaranteed workers’ rights. She introduced a bill on this, she says. Labour voted against it.

Jeremy Corbyn says he hopes MPs will join him in sending solidarity to eastern Nigeria, where 50 people were killed in a suicide bombing.

The Irish PM has said the British do not seem to have thought through Brexit. Can May reassure him that there will be no hard border in Ireland?

Theresa May echoes what Corbyn said about the bombing.

On Ireland, she says she has repeatedly said the common travel area will continue to operate. And, on trade and goods, there will be no hard border introduced. The government does not want physical infrastructure at the border.

Corbyn says the government has had 17 months to explain how this will work. The government has not engaged, he says. He says John Redwood, the Conservative MP, is a strategist for an investment firm. He recently advised people to invest abroad. Does May agree with him?

On Ireland, May says the government has published a paper. She says she is happy to move on to discussions about the future trade relationship.

She does not address the Redwood question.

This is from the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon.

As Hammond prepared to deliver the budget, here’s a reminder of how the national debt has risen (as a share of GDP) since the financial crisis.

Philip Hammond will announce that £4.5m raised from the fines imposed on banks for Libor-rigging will go to charities helping veterans, the Sun reports.

A good spot from Business Insider’s Thomas Colson.

Philip Hammond is going to promise to eliminate rough-sleeping by 2027, the Evening Standard’s Joe Murphy reports.

Here’s an extract from his story.

A new homelessness reduction taskforce will be launched, aiming to halve the number of rough sleepers by 2022 and reduce it to zero by 2027.

The budget will commit £20 million to schemes that support people who are on the brink of homelessness. “We want everyone to have a roof over their heads, and that’s why we’ve committed to eliminating rough-sleeping by 2027,” Mr Hammond said.

“This new taskforce will be an important first step in the fight. I want to commend the Evening Standard for its tireless campaigning on homelessness, keeping this important issue in the front of people’s minds.”

In 1947 Hugh Dalton resigned as chancellor after giving information to an evening paper about the contents of his budget that got published in the paper before the budget statement was over. But that was information about tax increases, which was more sensitive.

The Long and Winding Road might be more appropriate, given the government’s efforts to cut the deficit since 2010.....

Downing Street said the budget will adopt a “balanced approach”. Just to remind everyone how constrained it is, the Treasury has just tweeted out this, reminding us all that public sector debt stands at £1.7 trillion.

This is from ITV’s Robert Peston.

City experts are warning that the pound could suffer if the budget fails to impress Conservative MPs.

Kathleen Brooks of City Index says the “biggest market-moving event” will be Hammond’s own performance, amid those rumours that he could be reshuffled out of the Treasury.

She explains:

Brexiteers are circling for his job, and this budget is the battlefield for mounting Brexit tensions within the cabinet. If the chancellor bombs then the knives will be out. If May is forced to sack her chancellor in the aftermath of this budget then this could be a big negative for the pound. Just last week the pound dropped 1.5% on rumours (unsubstantiated) in the Sunday Times that the Tory party were getting ready to oust May.

Currently, sterling is bobbing around the $1.324 level, around 10% lower than before the EU referendum in June 2016.

Philip Hammond and his team of Treasury ministers have just emerged from Number 11.

After a quick pose with the budget red box, the chancellor has boarded his government car for the short drive to the House of Commons.

We’ve had the usual briefing about the budget cabinet meeting this morning, and it’s fair to say we’re little wiser than we were before.

The budget will, we were told by May’s spokesman, “adopt a balanced approach” between preserving the public finances and investment in areas such as the NHS and housing.

Hammond set out what he termed “a vision for post-Brexit Britain” with his budget, and - as is traditional – received an adulatory round of banging on the cabinet table by colleagues once he’d finished.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were among other ministers to speak, May’s spokesman said – and the latter did not use any long, “economicky” terms.

Shelter has some interesting research that shows why Philip Hammond really needs to think about policies on housing – and not just home owners but renters too.

In 2010, the Conservative party was ahead by a few points among people living in the private rented sector, but in 2015 Labour had a lead of just over 10 points with that group – and by 2017 it was well over 20 points. That rises to over 30 for the social rented sector. The Tory lead has even been squeezed to just a few points for those with mortgages.

The figures also shows that the Tories’ support dropped most dramatically in English marginals with the highest proportion of renting households.

It also shows that groups labelled as “young JAMs and liberal youth” consider housing to be one of the issues they care most about, with the vast majority thinking the situation is getting worse and worse.

As we mentioned earlier, if, as expected, Philip Hammond doesn’t raise taxes significantly, that will be unusual because the first budget after a general election normally sees the chancellor squeezing taxpayers as hard as he can get away with. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has the figures.

In a post on his Facebook page Robert Peston, the ITV political editor, predicts this could be the most dull budget he has ever covered.

In the round, however, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is the most dull budget of the 60 odd (if you include autumn statements) that it’s been my joy and privilege to cover in an absurdly long career as a hack.

Which points to this government’s most serious weakness.

It desperately needs to do big, bold and imaginative things, to prove to voters it has a vision and is in charge.

But with its non-existent parliamentary majority, and the permanent threat of revolting MPs, it can’t do anything big, let alone bold.

But, in a blog, Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, says being boring has its advantages.

And there will of course be decisions announced today that will have an impact on people’s lives. There will be more money for the NHS, although not as much as they have asked for, there will be new policies to try to encourage house-building, there will probably be changes to universal credit, there will be measures that will make a difference to firms around the country.

But for the Treasury today there’s no big bazooka - boring is good.

It is possible of course that the Treasury has simply been managing expectations. By leading people to believe there’s not much to see, anything that seems a modest success might feel like a decent win.

But the first political responsibility of Number 11 today is to try to avoid mistakes. Inspiring? Perhaps not. Vital to the prospects for the government and Philip Hammond’s career? Most definitely so.

Here are two stories from today’s papers about Theresa May’s relationship with Philip Hammond.

• The Daily Telegraph (paywall) says Number 10 took control of pre-budget briefing yesterday because the Treasury was deemed to be doing it so badly.

Theresa May’s relationship with Philip Hammond is close to breaking point this morning after No 10 was forced to take control of a last-minute Budget briefing amid fears the Chancellor’s latest financial statement will fall flat.

Downing Street ordered the Treasury to rush out an announcement on schools last night after alarm bells started ringing over what one Cabinet source described as “the worst budget build-up in history” ...

Mrs May finally appeared to have lost patience with Mr Hammond on Tuesday night after he fluffed his last chance to sell his Budget vision to the public.

A preview of his Budget statement, released to the media in time for 10pm news bulletins and national newspapers, was described by Tory MPs as “uninspiring” and contained no mention of Brexit.

Two hours later the Treasury performed an about-turn and announced extra money for teacher training and maths teaching following an intervention by Number 10.

• The Sun says May will not move Hammond in a new year reshuffle because she is too weak.

Mrs May is refusing to move or fire her long-standing former political ally in a January overhaul of her top table, despite a series of bitter clashes with him this year and in the Budget’s run up.

A close ally said: “There’s no doubt Hammond would do ‘a Geoffrey Howe’ on her from the backbenches.

“He wouldn’t hold back, and that would be fatal with the state the party is in.”

David Cameron was known for his ‘essay crisis’ style of government. But has Philip Hammond caught the habit?

The Daily Mirror have spotted that a light was blaring at Number 11 at 4.30am this morning, suggesting a late finish, or an early start, ahead of the chancellor’s big speech.

Whatever Philip Hammond announces today, Britain’s public sector faces hefty spending cuts over the next few years.

That’s due to austerity measures announced since 2010, as our colleague Alan Travis explains:

The Institute of Fiscal Studies says that existing plans mean that there will be a further £12bn cut in welfare spending by 2020/21, that the NHS will face its tightest funding period since the 1950s and that prisons will see a real-terms cut of 22%, followed by a tight settlement for the next two years.

Labour has posted a video of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, setting out his party’s demands for the budget.

Global asset manager M&G want Philip Hammond to get radical today, and announce the creation of a new sovereign wealth fund to pay for “socially useful investment”.

They argue that this fund, financed by new debt, could easily be financed by selling UK government bonds.

M&G Investment’s fund managers Tristan Hanson & Eric Lonergan say Hammond should seize the moment, as borrowing costs are so low.

Today represents a near unprecedented chance for the Treasury to borrow money for the long-term at negative interest rates after inflation. This window of opportunity, which will at some point close, must be acted upon – especially at a time when businesses are cautious about investing in the UK.

Some might raise concerns around the prospect of increasing public debt, but with the creation of such fund, additional liabilities would be matched by new assets on the other side of the balance sheet. There would, therefore, be no increase to government debt if we look at things in the round.

M&G is a major player in the bond market - so this does suggest there is appetite in the City for the UK to borrow more.

Economist Rupert Seggins has helpfully tweeted some charts showing where the government raises money....

...and where it spends it.

This is from Sky’s Lewis Goodall.

It’s worth noting that Britain can borrow rather cheaply at present.

Over in the City, UK 10-year government debt is changing hands at a yield (or interest rate) of under 1.3%. Back in 2008, it cost Britain over 4% per year to borrow for a decade.

So, why not use this opportunity to invest more in infrastructure and training?

Anastasia Nesvetailova, professor of political economy at City University, thinks it’s a no-brainer.

She told Radio 4’s Today Programme that the UK would find plenty of buyers for additional debt to repair the damage caused by austerity.

Nesvetailova argued:

The UK can borrow very easily in the international markets. Big institutional investors need government paper [debt] as a safe asset for their financial investment.

But Rupert Harrison, former advisor to George Osborne, argues that Hammond should stick to his goal of getting the deficit down.

As Harrison put it:

“There’s a risk that we get complacent and think that the job’s done, that we can run 3% budget deficits indefinitely.

That would be failing to learn from what happened in the run-up to the crisis in the 2000s when we ran big deficits.

We would go into the next crisis even more vulnerable than last time, with a higher level of debt, and having failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining…

But.... if extra borrowing was used wisely, then the economy would grow faster, meaning debt as a percentage of GDP could actually be lower in the long term.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has been tweeting some steers as to what will be in the budget.

If are looking for a very detailed analysis of the economic background to the budget, and the issues likely to come up, it will be hard to beat this 55-page briefing paper from the House of Commons library (pdf). There is a summary of what it is saying here.

Like the Red Box and the chancellor’s glass of water, political artist Kaya Mar is a regular feature of budget day.

Here’s his latest effort to mark Hammond’s speech:

You can get up to speed on today’s budget speech with these charts, showing how growth has slowed and productivity has stalled:

On budget day the cabinet meets at 8am so that the chancellor can brief his colleagues on what he is going to announce. Here are pictures of some of the cabinet ministers arriving for this morning’s cabinet which is still going on.

According to the BBC news this morning, Philip Hammond, the chancellor, will stand up at 12.30pm to deliver a budget intended to “revive the government’s fortunes”. Good luck with that. A more jaundiced view might be that his primary goal is to avoid catastrophe.

The first budget after a general election is normally the one chancellors use to raise taxes. But given that the Conservative party on its own doesn’t have a parliamentary majority, and that the voters’ tolerance of austerity seems to have reached its limit, Hammond has very little room for manoeuvre. My colleague Larry Elliott, in his pre-budget analysis, reckons it will be “the trickiest budget for a generation”.

It would be a challenge for even the most creative, dexterous, authoritative chancellor. But Hammond is not that man. He was chosen by Theresa May as a steady, City-friendly, fiscally conservative safe-pair-of-hands unlikely to overshadow her, but since then their relationship has deteriorated swiftly and he only avoided the sack after the general election because the result left her too weak to move him. But his long-term future at Number 11 is uncertain and there has been speculation that he could be moved in a reshuffle. Only last week Nick Timothy, May’s co chief of staff until June and for many years someone whose views were thought to be interchangeable with hers, wrote a column in the Sun deriding him as useless (I paraphrase, but only a bit). The Tory right would like to see him go because he’s accused of Brexit thoughtcrime (he thinks it’s a lousy idea, and finds it hard to pretend otherwise). And his last budget backfired when he had to abandon one its main money-raising measures within a week. For the chancellor, a budget that doesn’t lead to a U-turn and sees him still in his job at Christmas would amount to a result of sorts. Anything else would be a welcome bonus.

Here is the Guardian’s overnight budget preview story.

And here is our guide to what to look out for.

I’ll be covering the build-up to the budget, the announcement itself, and the reaction with my colleague Graeme Wearden. After Hammond sits down we will be focusing particularly on the “small print” in the budget, the surprise and hidden announcements buried in the red book. We will also be flagging up the best analysis.

The key timings are:

12pm: PMQs (we will cover the May/Corbyn exchanges, and budget-related comments)

12.30pm: Hammond’s budget statement.

3pm: Office for Budget Responsibility press conference.

If you want to follow us, or contact us, on Twitter I’m on @AndrewSparrow and Graeme is on @graemewearden.