The chancellor faces triple-dip recession, failed deficit targets, growing inequality, low investment and increased unemployment as he announces his budget.

Paul Morrison, Policy Adviser for the Methodist Church in Britain, says that the Chancellor's Budget this weekmust put right previous unjust rhetoric about people in poverty.

The assertion that “those at the top and those at the bottom are being hit hardest” by the government's austerity policies suggests a misleading equivalence, says Simon Barrow. In reality it is those with least who are being punished most.