Richie Soonak delivered the 2021 budget today, where he set out a moral mission to strengthen

the size of the British state, but also pledged big increases in spending.

Today's budget delivers a stronger economy for the British people, stronger growth with

the UK recovering faster than our major competitors.

Stronger public finances with our debt under control, stronger employment with fewer people

out of work and more people in work.

Welcome to this budget special episode of Payne's Politics, your insider guide towards

going on in Westminster from the Financial Times, with me Sebastian Payne.

In this budget special episode we'll be looking into all the tax and spending announcements,

the surprise in Universal Credit, and the increase in the foreign aid budget at some point

in the future.

For this little episode, I'd like to be joined by our political editor George Parker

and economic editor Chris Giles.

So George, I'll begin with you, we're both in the House of Commons today.

How did you find the budget and how well was it received?

In order to be said, it was very well received by Conservative MPs, because it seemed to be

all things for all people.

For those people who wanted more public spending, they got that in very large amounts, chance

to announcing a 3% real terms increase in departmental budgets over the next three years.

At the same time, there was this thing, as you mentioned in the intro there, this sort

of peroration by the chance, where he reasserted his Conservative beliefs that there was a moral

mission to control the inexorable rise of the state and to talk about tax cuts before

...