LONDON (Reuters) - Below are reactions to Chancellor Alistair Darling’s budget statement to parliament on Wednesday.

MARKET REACTION

KEITH BOWMAN, ANALYST, HARGREAVES LANDSDOWN

“I don’t think we’re seeing a massive amount of movement. I think the market as always was attempting to price in some of the comments that we heard beforehand.

“We already had some of the house builders a little firmer prior to the budget, the life insurance sector, again, was already a little weaker.

“You could get a secondary reaction from the equity market, depending if the fixed interest markets were to take things badly.”

MARK PRIEST, SENIOR TRADER, ETX CAPITAL

“Some of the banking stocks came down and we saw (insurer) Prudential fall quite sharply.

“I mean to be honest with you the (equity) markets haven’t really reacted. They are down but they haven’t reacted massively negatively.”

“(The budget) doesn’t paint a particularly rosy picture I didn’t think. Unemployment figures as we saw today were back up, with the level of debt that the government has thrown us into I think people are going to be very concerned to be honest.”

GEOFFREY YU, CURRENCY STRAGETIST, UBS

“That debt-to-GDP ratio is a bit to the high side ... People are wondering if the UK will be able to sustain its borrowing needs.

“I’m going to be interested in seeing what the ratings agencies have to say in the next few days. Any whiff that they will have to review the UK’s ratings because of this, then you’re going to see a wave of sterling selling. That’s the risk right now.

“The market’s not going to like the tax bit either. You can’t run an international financial centre with a top tax bracket of 50 percent. The UK has a funding gap problem, and you want people to bring money into the country; people will have second thoughts about that.”

LAUREN ROSBOROUGH, FX STRATEGIST, WESTPAC

“At the margin, the UK Budget is worse than the market had anticipated. Over the medium term, potential growth in the UK has fallen and the fair value of sterling is lower. Net net, this will weigh on cable and in the short-term it could stymie the recent appreciation in sterling crosses.”

RUSSELL BLOOM, FOREX ANALYST, ACTION ECONOMICS

“The FX market is worried about the debt market’s ability to absorb the amount of issuance for the next year. A lack of interest could see speculation of IMF aid rear its head again. I think this is the fear that is being priced into the market.”

PHYLLIS PAPADAVID, FOREX STRATEGIST, SOCGEN

“It’s not positive, and we’re seeing sterling weaken on the news. The fiscal slippage in the near-term is not doing sterling any favours.”

NEIL JONES, HEAD OF HEDGE FUND FOREX SALES, MIZUHO

“I would expect sterling to weaken across the board following the income tax changes. The market will consider the disincentive to effort and possible brain drain effects of possible talent moving abroad.”

CHRIS HOSSAIN, SENIOR SALES MANAGER, ODL SECURITIES

“Darling was in an unenviable position. Paint an encouraging picture and the markets don’t believe him, and add to the gloom, and see markets fall away.

“The initial reaction from the (stock) market is muted -- it’s encouraging that we haven’t seen a dramatic decline, which could be deemed positive in these turbulent times.

“It will be more pertinent to see how markets react over the next few sessions as we have more time to digest the news.”

POLITICAL REACTION

DAVID CAMERON, LEADER, OPPOSITION CONSERVATIVE PARTY

“He is planning to borrow 348 billion pounds over the next two years, that is more -- over just two years -- than every previous government put together, not just every government since World War Two ... but since the Bank of England was first founded more than 300 years ago.

“This budget does not do enough to bring the public finances under control.”

NICK CLEGG, LEADER, OPPOSITION LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

“The worst of times demands the best of budgets but today we got a mish mash of recycled announcements.

“The economic crash is not the result of a few minor mistakes, patchwork repairs wont fix it. We need to do something fundamentally different and that needs to start with a different kind of banking system.

“We need a banking system where no bank is too big to fail, where high street banks take no unnecessary risks with people’s money.”

GOVERNMENT BORROWING

PHILIP SHAW, CHIEF ECONOMIST, INVESTEC

“The Chancellor has hinted at some tightening in fiscal policy from next year and together with stronger economic growth that should begin to deliver an improvement in the budget deficit.

“However with net borrowing expected to be 5.5 percent of GDP in 2013/14 we would still point out that this is an extremely high level of government borrowing over the medium term.

“In pound terms the 97 billion is greater than the deficit which was recorded in 2008/09, just to give an idea of the scale of it.”

ECONOMIC FORECASTS

ALAN CLARKE, UK ECONOMIST, BNP PARIBAS

“On GDP I think -3.5 percent is still too optimistic...I think its more like -4.5 than -3.5.

“I think he is too optimistic on growth in the out years, 2010 and 2011. To have a bounceback of 3.5 percent in 2011 when you are taxing people, when interest rates are going to be normalised, I think that is a bit too optimistic so ultimately borrowing will probably be a bit higher in the later years.”

STEPHEN LEWIS, CHIEF ECONOMIST, INSINGER DE BEAUFORT

“I think this year’s forecast is probably fairly realistic. It’s probably going to sit somewhere between between three and four percent (contraction).

“Next year, it seems a shade optimistic to me. Most forecasters would be looking for recovery to start early next year and therefore looking for slightly less growth than what he sees. It would be in the 0.5 to 1 percent range.

“What’s most unrealistic of all is his projection for years 2011 onwards because I think it’s going to be difficult to achieve 3.5 pct growth annually over that period.”

JONATHAN LOYNES, CHIEF ECONOMIST, CAPITAL ECONOMICS

“I think they are as we expected him to announce but they are stronger than ours, we’ve got the economy contracting by 4 percent this year and then by another 1 next year so we would be more pessimistic than him.

“It is a bit more optimistic than the consensus forecast for next year but not dramatically so.”

BUDGET MEASURES

HENK POTTS, STRATEGIST, BARCLAYS WEALTH

“The Chancellor is being more cautious than he has been on his estimates, highlighting what a perilous state the country’s finances are in and what a desperate state the UK economy is in.”