Responses from business, commerce and the unions to the Budget announcement:

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: "This is a win-win budget for people and public services. Gordon Brown knows that by investing in our public services he is investing in our future.  He's had the courage and foresight to plan further ahead than many politicians usually do."

David Felwick, chairman of the British Retail Consortium, said the chancellor had delivered a "bland Budget". "He has done nothing to help maintain consumer demand or to significantly reduce the raft of government related business costs," he said. "Whilst there is virtue in stability, there is no virtue in wasting an opportunity to improve the poor value for taxes retailers receive for contribution to the exchequer or to roll back the cost burden on business."

Peter Robinson, senior economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research said: "The Budget is as boring as we'd predicted - it contains no significant tax measures and confirms that health spending will rise as fast as the government had previously indicated. But education spending will rise much more slowly and will stabilise at roughly 5.5 per cent of GDP. We still don't know, in any detail, what will happen to spending in other areas.  All eyes now are on how the cake will be cut in this summer's spending review."

The Child Poverty Action Group welcomed extra funds for education and childcare but expressed concern over the intention to cut staff at the Department for Work and Pensions and the lack of lip service to social exclusion. "For child poverty to receive only one mention in such an important Budget is disappointing," spokesman Dr Paul Dornan said. "Progress on dealing with it has been good, but even so 3.8 million children live in poverty in