The Chancellor spent the first half of his speech lying about the income tax savings of this Budget and his first action in selling it to the people should be to apologise to the voters and workers he misled. Unlike the Conservative Party's Shadow Budget which genuinely gave £800, or 2.8% of the average worker's salary, back to the workers of this country the Government's budget only gives workers an additional £200 a year. We've had one Chancellor sacked for gross incompetence, if the current one doesn't walk back his lies then the Prime Minister may be forced to sack another.

The first budget of this Government began a war on pensioners that saw the Triple Lock abolished, pension benefits cut, and your right to save for old age hacked to bits with a fire axe, after an arduous campaign and the sacking of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer the Government pulled the budget and executed a comprehensive u-turn, now they are back for your old age. Brown, Suchet, and now Ward are raiding your pension pots for tax goodies by cutting the annual allowance for pension savings. Our country is getting older and is facing an old age crisis, the way to fix this is to encourage people to save for their old age rather than encouraging more profligate spending now, a lesson someone really needs to teach this Government as it happens. The Government have renewed their war on pensions exactly one year after it cost their Chancellor his job, Labour and the Lib Dems may be content with pensioner poverty but the Conservative Party are not. Our plan protects the Triple Lock and fully entitles you to save for your old age so that you may retire into security rather than poverty.

This Chancellor remains committed to protecting the exploitative gambling industry over the people that they are exploiting. Victims of betting shops and casinos lose up to tens of thousands of pounds in a single session but the Government still won't remove their VAT exemption in a move that shouldn't surprise anyone. Whilst this Government remains beholden to the betting lobby you can be sure that the Conservative Party will stand up for the exploited over the exploiters. Our Shadow Budget removed the VAT exemption and increased Betting Duty to boot.

This Government are at war with our British institutions, from the high street to the local pub they are taxing the old way of life into oblivion to pay down the deficit that they created to pay for their reckless investments last year and feckless borrowing before Labour's recession. The Conservative Party have cut Beer Duty to protect the British pub and we have frozen small business rates to protect the High Street. The Government hiked both, not that that should surprise anyone anymore.

The Government's war on motorists has well and truly begun with this Budget. Vehicle Excise Duty is up across the board meaning it'll be more expensive to buy a car, Insurance Premium Tax is up meaning it'll be more expensive to insure your car, and Fuel Duty has gone up meaning it'll be more expensive when you have to fill your car up. While the Government wage war on our nation's motorists it is the Conservative Party that are capping VED increases and freezing Insurance Tax and Fuel Duty to ensure that nobody is priced out of owning a car because of how much money they have. The Labour Party used to be the party of working people, with all these tax increases hurting the workers it's no wonder they're falling so far behind in the polls.

The Government have elected to protect the gambling industry's VAT exemptions but continue to enforce the EU's rules against an exemption for women's sanitary products, instead upholding the antiquated and unfair "Tampon Tax" for the second successive budget. We were told there would be negotiation, we were told that the Tampon Tax would be ended, instead the Chancellor devotes his efforts to protecting exploitative gambling shops, I guess we can add the War on Women to the Government's ever growing list of grudges and grievances.

This Budget was a bumbling act of an incompetent Government and an innumerate Chancellor.  Members of the Government have repeatedly made false or incorrect claims about the amount of income tax savings being offered to working class taxpayers, inflating the amount by five times.  The Government only matched the Conservatives' deficit target by taking a weed whacker to the Armed Forces and they doubled down on white elephant projects such as HS2.  Whatever bright spots it might have hidden within, this is a useless Budget destined to hurt Britain.

The Conservatives have been spreading this outright lie that they are spending more on the environment than the government. It just doesn't stand up to the scrutiny. In actuality - in keeping with the ambitious plan to decarbonise our economy and place Britain at the forefront of the green industrial revolution - this government is spending billions more on the environment and on green growth than the Conservatives would. We have invested billions in a green stimulus programme - ensuring every sector and every community is able to benefit from the transition to a greener economy and mobilising the best of British engineering. We have optimised and made more efficient hundreds of millions in pounds in renewable energy subsidies, promoting better air quality and lower carbon emissions. We have increased spending on environmental protection initiatives where the Conservative Party has not. 

There was nothing more ludicrous in the budget debate than the Conservatives trying to take credit for government spending decisions. In areas such as health and law and order, the Conservatives argued for keeping the trajectories of government spending and investment that we implemented in the last budget, then accused the government of copying them when - surprise surprise - we proposed keeping those very same decisions intact. Maybe it was a mistake - Conservative MPs genuinely seemed to believe that they had made bold decisions here rather than just agreeing with the government. The Conservatives have been either dishonest or have made clerical errors in their response to this budget - here's hoping they actually confront those mistakes.

It is disgusting to see Conservatives continuing to try and weaponise the issue of period poverty to score party political points - we are working to change EU VAT laws to try and fix the erroneous issue of the tampon tax, and as there is cross-party consensus on this issue, Conservative MPs are welcome to reach out to the government and work together on this. In our last budget we made funds available to provide free sanitary products at our schools, we are working on this issue still, and by increasing education spending further we are making more progress than any previous government on fighting period poverty.

This is a government committed to supporting science, research, development and innovation, in all its forms. Being at the cutting edge of new ideas and new products is how we create wealth, how we create jobs and new businesses, how we marshal the resources needed to face ecological, social and economic challenges. It is essential for quality of life and for economic prosperity. That is why this government has increased Research Council funding - where the Conservatives have frozen it. That is why we have increased medical research, to better fight diseases and improve health. That is why we are championing the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, already a success, to build on the best talents of our nation and put British ingenuity at the forefront of solving global problems. 

For children and families, this budget continues to build on the excellent work of our last budget. We're hiring more teachers and more school staff, investing more in the pupil premium to ensure every school has the resources it needs to take care of the most deprived or vulnerable pupils, and continued investing in new school grants to ensure wellbeing and a rounded education fit for the 21st century world. We continue increasing the tax-free personal allowance - lifting hundreds of thousands of families out of income tax altogether - and providing the investment in our safety net necessary to end the cruel and draconian use of sanctions and the scandalous reliance on food banks. We have also doubled the hours of free childcare available for 1 to 2 year olds. The government is committed to giving every child as great an advantage in their early years as possible. 

The Coalition's 2015 Budget will be an unmitigated disaster for our country, and will only serve to take Britain backwards. In their budget the Coalition has offered next to no income tax relief for hardworking Britons, has once again proposed massive tax increases on business and the financial sector, and plans to make heating and lighting your home even more expensive. It will further dampen economic growth, force businesses to pass off the costs of higher taxes to consumers in the form of price increases, and deny the British people of the economic opportunity they deserve. This budget is yet another sign of how deeply out of touch the Coalition is with the lives of the everyday British person, and cannot be allowed to pass. 

In their most recent attempt to undermine home ownership in Britain, the Coalition has released a budget that massively cuts funding for the Help 2 Buy scheme. Their decision to cut billions of pounds from the program is yet another sign of their disdain for homeownership, and their complacency in allowing only the most well off to ever be able to own their own home. Help 2 Buy has enabled thousands of families to purchase their first home, allowing them to realize the dream of home ownership and providing them a guaranteed source of value to pass off to their children. Every British person deserves to know that if they're willing to work for it, they too will be able to one day own their own home. That's an aspiration that the Conservative Party will always fight to protect, no matter how little Labour and the Liberal Democrats seem to care for it.