14:15

Hello, I’m Aisha Gani and I’ll be taking you through the rest of this afternoon’s proceedings in parliament. You can tweet me at @aishagani and feel free to leave comments below the line – I’ll include the best ones.

So far in the Commons there has mostly been debates on the sustainability of the NHS, mental health services in schools, and on the plight of refugees.



But back to budget responses. Perhaps the most intriguing query today was from Labour’s Helen Goodman, the shadow work and pensions secretary.

She suggested that the budget is unfair to Catholics because of plans to limit to two the number of children eligible for tax credits from April 2017.



Goodman said: “Could you explain to the House why cutting tax credits for large families is a fair thing to do when it will be concentrated … on families where children are living in poverty, on Roman Catholic families, on Catholics from other minorities.



“Don’t you understand that every child matters?”



Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary replied: “I have for some time believed the way tax credits operated distorted the system so there were far too many families not going into work, living in bigger and bigger houses, with larger families subsidised by the state when many others, the vast majority of families in Britain, make decisions about how many children they can have and the houses they can live in.

“Getting that balance back is about getting fairness back into the system.”