MPs quiz Osborne on budget as poll says his approval rating never been lower - Politics live

Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen, including George Osborne being questioned by the Treasury committee about the budget

• Osborne's satisfaction rating as chancellor never been lower, says poll
• Osborne's evidence to the Treasury committee - Summary

4.02pm GMT

Even when people aren't shouting at each other, they aren't being encouraged to take action either.

Groups like Momentum now appear to be draining the very energy from our political process they claimed to be promoting, by encouraging the myth righteous bystanding is activism.

It's been one of the worst weeks for the Conservatives since the election in terms of public opinion. Public reaction to the budget is in 2012 'omnishambles' territory, and on some measures even worse, while also dragging David Cameron's personal ratings to their lowest for three years. The drop in confidence in the government's long-term economic plan - crucial to their election victory - is another cause for concern, but only if Labour can take advantage.

3.44pm GMT

Stephen Crabb has made his first visit to a job centre since becoming work and pensions secretary, the Press Association reports.

Crabb, who replaced Iain Duncan Smith after his sudden resignation last week, met claimants and staff in Enfield, north London, where the Jobcentre Plus office deals with more than 20,000 customers at any one time.

He said: "It's incredibly important to me to meet the jobcentre staff delivering our first-rate services, as well as those who are seeking to improve their employment prospects.

3.26pm GMT

The PM has left this morning for the Canary Islands for a "short break with his family" and will be away until Wednesday, Downing Street has confirmed. We reported last week that he was going to Lanzarote, despite having urged people to take holidays in the flood-hit north of England this Easter. On Wednesday night he told MPs at the 1922 committee that he felt like he needed "time to think".

3.22pm GMT

This isn't the first time Jeremy Corbyn has been ahead of David Cameron in Ipsos MORI's satisfaction ratings. The archive of figures are here, and they show that Corbyn was ahead of Cameron on net satisfaction from September last year until December.

3.08pm GMT

Here is more from the Ipsos MORI poll.

It shows Jeremy Corbyn ahead of David Cameron on net satisfaction (the proportion satisfied with the way each is doing his job, minus those dissatisfied).

2.10pm GMT

Here are the main points from George Osborne's evidence to the Treasury committee about the budget. It was a less combative hearing then normal, mainly because the Labour MP John Mann, the committee's resident interrogative rottweiler, was not there, but nevertheless the questioning was substantive, and reasonably productive.

I think anybody listening to this will have to conclude that it is entirely possible that you will make further cuts to welfare in the autumn statement.

That is not the conclusion I would draw from listening to me.

I am sorry that Iain left the government, I worked with him over six years. It was always going to be a difficult relationship between the chancellor and the person in charge of the largest spending department. That is what the jobs require of us.

I think our exit from the EU would cause an economic shock, or a convulsive shock, as it's been described recently, and that would have an impact on prices and GDP and the like.

That's not just my judgment, that's a judgment expressed by a whole range of independent observers of the British economy who have no skin in the game.

The Bank of England and the financial policy committee have identified potential systemic risks in the large increase in the buy-to-let market ... It is highly likely we will give the FPC powers over the buy-to-let market. It is possible we can do that later this year.

12.56pm GMT

Tyrie is just winding up the session now. He thanks Osborne for coming, says he looks forward to seeing him in April and says that, although Osborne faced some tough questions, he did come into office having to deal with a record deficit.

This is from Reuters' William James.

Tyrie ends his committee's marathon grilling of George Osborne with the verbal equivalent of a friendly hug.

12.55pm GMT

The Ipsos MORI poll also shows that people think the budget is bad for them personally and, by a much bigger margin, bad for the country.

The chancellor's poor performance in satisfaction ratings this month is mirrored by the public reaction to the budget proposals. When asked about the budget proposals specifically the poll finds:

Cutting disability benefits was especially unpopular with the public with 84% opposed to the proposal and just 13% in support of it. Even supporters of Mr Osborne's own party show strong opposition with seven in ten (71%) Conservatives opposed to the plan and 22% in support of it. Despite a win with the sugar tax (69% supporting it and 26% opposed) half (49%) disagree that in the long term the government's policies will improve the economy (43% believe they will).

12.43pm GMT

Here is the Ipsos MORI chart showing George Osborne's latest satisfaction rating.

One week following George Osborne's budget announcement, Ipsos MORI's new Political Monitor shows the chancellor's satisfaction ratings have fallen compared to last month. Three in five (60%) say they are dissatisfied with the performance of Mr Osborne (up 14 points from February) compared to one in four (27%) who say they are satisfied (down 13 points). This equals his worst performance in March 2013. Mr Osborne still has the backing of most of his party with three in five (58%) Conservative supporters saying they are satisfied with the Chancellor (although 31% are dissatisfied).

12.40pm GMT

Osborne says leaving the EU would cause a "convulsive shock" which would have an impact on prices and GDP.

12.34pm GMT

Q: The press has been briefed that this will be published in May.

Osborne says it will be before the purdah period. He will tell the committee when he has a date.

12.27pm GMT

Q: You will be publishing a Treasury analysis of the costs and benefits of EU membership. Will the OBR assess that?

No, says Osborne.

12.27pm GMT

Q: Do you accept that you drew the OBR into the EU referendum debate?

No, says Osborne.

12.24pm GMT

The Conservative Steve Baker goes next.

Q: How confident are you that your productivity plans will work?

Scary chart from @resfoundation: @OBR_UK now assumes the financial crisis blew a permanent hole in productivity: pic.twitter.com/ZUQm9ITCuC

12.15pm GMT

Q: Is it possible you might make further cuts to welfare at the autumn statement?

Osborne says he has no plans to do that.

12.07pm GMT

Q: There are four ways you could plug the 4.4bn gap in the budget caused by the PIP cut: higher taxes, departmental spending cuts, welfare cuts, or higher borrowing. Which will you choose?

Osborne says he will announce this in his autumn statement.

12.03pm GMT

Osborne defends the idea of having a welfare cap.

Previously the Treasury would spend a great deal of time worrying about something like the Welsh Office budget, but doing nothing about the welfare budget, even though it is much, much larger.

12.02pm GMT

Rachel Reeves goes next.

Q: Will you meet the welfare cap in any year in this parliament?

11.58am GMT

Andrew Tyrie goes next.

Q: Wouldn't it be better if you had carried on publishing your own distributional analysis in the form you did in the 2010-15 parliament?

11.54am GMT

Goodman turns to the IFS's distributional impact of the budget.

Osborne says the IFS assumes that extra spending funded by borrowing is a win for families. If he borrowed 100bn and spent it on families, the IFS would score that as a win. But it would not be a win for them, he says.

11.47am GMT

Q: You have to find the money to make up for the 1.3bn PIP U-turn. And there is another unexplained 300m from the business rates transfer. Will this come from further cuts, higher tax or extra borrowing?

Osborne says he does not accept her assessment on business rates.

11.41am GMT

Q: There are several areas were you have not said how cuts will be achieved. You have not said how departments will cut spending by 3.5bn. And another 2bn is coming from pensions.

Osborne says departments have been able to cut spending on this scale before.

11.37am GMT

Goodman says the reducation in business rates leads to an increase in the corporation tax take.

That means small businesses will get a 5.5bn cut, not a 7bn cut as Osborne said in his speech, she says.

11.35am GMT

Helen Goodman, the Labour MP, goes next.

Osborne says the money allocated to local authorities in future years will reflect the amount lost from the cut in business rates.

11.30am GMT

The Evening Standard has some bad new for Osborne today.

George Osborne's ratings have plunged, according to exclusive polling taken before and after his disastrous eighth budget.

The full scale of the damage is revealed in Ipsos MORI research showing public hostility has grown towards the chancellor, his policies and even David Cameron ...

11.26am GMT

Rachel Reeves, the Labour former shadow work and pensions secretary, goes next.

Q: Duncan Smith said he did not want the PIP consultation to be part of the budget. He wanted to announce his plans after the budget. Was there a discussion about this?

11.23am GMT

Q: Duncan Smith says he did not know about the PIP U-turn until he heard about it from the media.

Osborne says he thought he had made it clear after the budget that the government wanted time to get this right.

11.23am GMT

Osborne says the relationship between the chancellor and the minister in charge of the biggest spending department will always be a difficult one.

But he is sorry that Duncan Smith has resigned.

Osborne: "I'm sorry Iain left Government, always difficult relationship between Chancellor & person running biggest spending department"

11.20am GMT

Andrew Tyrie goes next. He raises Duncan Smith's interview with Andrew Marr.

Last thing George Osborne wanted to hear from Andrew Tyrie: "can we return to Iain Duncan Smith's interview with Andrew Marr?"

11.18am GMT

Q: Stephen Crabb, the work and pensions secretary, said the government would not cut welfare spending. But the Treasury is just saying it has no plans for this. Which is it?

Osborne says the government will not seek further cuts. It has no further plans for welfare cuts. It will focus on implementing the cuts already announced.

11.13am GMT

Q: At one point did Iain Duncan Smith first raise concerns with you about your plans for Personal Independence Payments.

Osborne says he does not want to get into that.

11.06am GMT

Wes Streeting, the Labour MP, goes next.

He starts by saying when President Obama visits the UK, he won't call Osborne Jeffrey (a reference to this story) but Bungle.

11.04am GMT

Osborne hints disability cuts not off the table: 'Clearly if you are going to make reforms... you need to go about it in a better way'

11.02am GMT

Q: The Bank of England has said the growth of the buy-to-let market is a risk to the economy. Do you have any views on whether to give the Bank of England powers over this?

Osborne says it is "highly likely" that he will give the Bank of England's financial policy committee further powers to control the buy-to-let market.

10.55am GMT

Q: On the sugar tax, there has been talk of a legal challenge. What is the government's position?

Osborne says many companies are trying to do that right thing, and reduce the sugar in their drinks, and that is to be applauded.

10.50am GMT

Chris Philp, a Conservative, goes next.

Q: Why is it important to run a surplus?

10.47am GMT

Q: Robert Chote, head of the OBR, thinks you are locking yourself in to quite arbitrary short-term changes. You changed your fiscal charter three times last year.

Osborne says he is willing to take difficult decisions to improve the public finances. The IMF recently praised the simplicity of his surplus rule, he says.

Osborne seeking to make a virtue of responding quickly to the big adjustments from the OBR's downgrade of productivity

10.42am GMT

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chair of the committee, starts.

He says it was a "rather curious budget".

10.36am GMT

George Osborne is about to give evidence to the Treasury committee about the budget.

You can watch the hearing here.

10.31am GMT

Here is a Guardian video from Donald Trump's interview.

10.21am GMT

Sir Alan Duncan, the Conservative former international development secretary, is generally seen as one of the party's more hardline Eurosceptics. Yet, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, he has announced that he had decided to vote for Britain to remain in the EU. He says he had expected to end up campaigning for Brexit but that on reflection he has decided leaving the EU would be "fraught with danger".

The lure of Brexit is that it would deliver for the UK a tidy alternative to EU membership, and that restored self-government would empower our economic prospects and help insulate the UK from global difficulties. Our democracy would be purified, our border controls would solve the problem of immigration, and we would prosper as an economy untrammelled by others' rules. The trouble is: I don't think this is true ...

It is a fundamental tenet of Conservative thought that we are realists who take the world as we find it - and that we reject utopian philosophies which offer a path towards perfection. Some say that leaving the EU is no different to resigning from the local cricket club and that we can simply return the UK to the status quo ante. The language of this theoretical paradise has become the Marxism of the Right. It is unwise, and is fraught with danger.

For me, however, the most compelling arguments are political. Our withdrawal from the EU would do nothing to help arrest the rise of the far Right in Germany, prevent worrying developments in Turkey, or address economic pressures in Greece, Italy and Spain. We are all facing massive danger from the shores of the Mediterranean, with utter anarchy in Syria, fragile authority in Egypt, and a vacuum of power in Libya. Only politics can adequately address the deep challenges of the region ...

Whereas I used to think that our membership of the EU signified a loss of confidence in ourselves, I now think that leaving it would be an unforgivable expression of no confidence in our ability to affect the course of Europe's future. We cannot shape that vision by looking in history's rear-view mirror and opting to retrench.

9.55am GMT

Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, told the Today programme this morning that he did not agree with Sir Richard Dearlove's analyis. (See 9.38am.) He suggested that Dearlove did not appreciate how much things had changed since Dearlove left his post as head of MI6 in 2004. Wainwright said:

I certainly respect Sir Richard's views but in the 10 years or so since he left office I have seen huge progress in the EU in building up a far stronger capability to fight terrorism and serious crime. The UK has very often been the driver of that work.

9.47am GMT

On Channel 4 News last night Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, said he did not accept Sir Richard Dearlove's analysis. (See 9.38am.) He said:

The fact is, across Europe we do have these mechanisms now for sharing flight information, sharing intelligence about terrorists; movements, swapping data about them that enable all intelligence services across Europe to pool their efforts to try to keep a tab on them.

What is very clear to me as the defence secretary charged with helping to keep this country safe is that we should not be leaving international organisations or intelligence-sharing partnerships, that would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

9.38am GMT

In the past it was never thought that national security was an important factor in the debate about EU membership but in recent months David Cameron and others campaigning for Britain to remain in have been making much of the argument that the country would be less safe if it left. At the launch of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign last year security was the top story.

But an article by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, has knocked several holes in the Remain camp's security case. Writing in Prospect, he says that the security cost of Brexit would be "low" and that in some respects being outside the EU could make Britain safer.

Whether one is an enthusiastic European or not, the truth about Brexit from a national security perspective is that the cost to Britain would be low.

Brexit would bring two potentially important security gains: the ability to dump the European convention on human rights-remember the difficulty of extraditing the extremist Abu Hamza of the Finsbury Park Mosque-and, more importantly, greater control over immigration from the European Union.

If a security source in Germany learns that a terrorist attack is being planned in London, the Bundesamt fi1/4r Verfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence service, is certainly not going to withhold the intelligence from MI5 simply because the UK is not an EU member.

In addition, though the UK participates in various European and Brussels-based security bodies, they are of little consequence: the Club de Berne, made up of European Security Services; the Club de Madrid, made up of European Intelligence Services; Europol; and the Situation Centre in the European Commission are generally speaking little more than forums for the exchange of analysis and views.

With the exception of Europol, these bodies have no operational capacity and with 28 members of vastly varying levels of professionalism in intelligence and security, the convoy must accommodate the slowest and leakiest of the ships of state.

Would Brexit damage our defence and intelligence relationship with the United States, which outweighs anything European by many factors of 10? I conclude confidently that no, it would not. The replacement of Trident, the access to overhead satellite monitoring capabilities, the defence exchanges that are hidden from public view, the UK-US co-operation over signals intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency/Secret Intelligence Service/Federal Bureau of Investigation/MI5 liaison and much more would continue as before.

There would be disapproval of Brexit in Washington, and some disappointment too, but the practical consideration of living in a dangerous world and depending on true friends would win out.

8.51am GMT

MPs recently spent three hours debating whether the American presidential candidate Donald Trump should be banned from the UK, so they can't really complain if he chooses to reciprocate by expressing his own views on British matters. He has this morning, predicting that Britain will vote to leave the EU because of the "craziness" going on with immigration.

Trump made his comment in an interview with Good Morning Britain's Piers Morgan. The first extract from the interview was shown yesterday, and the second this morning. The full 40-minute interview will be on ITV tomorrow night.

I think that Britain will separate from the EU. I think that maybe it's time, especially in light of what's happened with the craziness that is going on with immigration, with people pouring in all over the place I think that Britain will end up separating from the EU. That's my opinion. I'm not endorsing it one way or the other.

There was such opposition from people that live in Great Britain, in the UK generally, in fact all over Europe, the people were incensed at the concept of me being banned for speaking really what they said was the truth.

And, as you know, that ban went nowhere, it shouldn't have gone anywhere, it was a disgraceful thing but it went nowhere, but a lot of people - and I mean thousands and thousands of people - were tweeting saying you're right, you're right, Mr Trump, you are right, and so I don't know what's going on over there but I can tell you there is some unrest.