The Chancellor has set the date for the final Budget of this Parliament.
Appearing before the Commons Treasury Committee, George Osborne confirmed that the red box would be presented on March 18th – less than two months before the General Election.
The Liberal Democrats may be frustrated that the Budget will fall a matter of weeks before Parliament is dissolved.
The party is understood to have pushed for the announcement to come in February, fearing their Coalition partners may seize the opportunity to unveil some potentially vote-winning policies.
Although speaking to MPs yesterday, Mr Osborne once again dismissed any suggestion there would be any major changes to tax before the end of the Parliament.
“Anyone expecting unaffordable pre-election giveaways will be disappointed because we will stay on the course to prosperity,” he said.
At the same committee meeting, MPs took the opportunity to quiz the Chancellor about the Autumn Statement, as well as claims that he had managed to halve the £1.7billion sum demanded by the EU earlier this year.
But perhaps the toughest questions came after Mr Osborne admitted he wanted to run a budget surplus by 2020.
Labour claimed that the only way to achieve this aim would be to implement “extreme and ideological” spending cuts, which would reduce the state to a size not seen since the 1930s.
