BUDGET: Osborne’s key quotes from the summer budget

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne outside 11 Downing Street before heading to the House of Commons to deliver his first Tory-only Budget. (Picture: Lauren Hurley/PA Wire)

“A Budget that puts security first ... a Budget for working people.”

* “The Budget will take Britain from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare economy, to the higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare country we intend to create.”

* “Britain still spends too much, borrows too much and our weak productivity shows we don’t train enough or build enough or invest enough.”

* “This is a big Budget for a country with big ambitions.”

* “You only have to look at the crisis unfolding in Greece as I speak to realise that if a country’s not in control of its borrowing, the borrowing takes control of the country.”

* “We should cut the deficit at the same pace as we did in the last parliament. We shouldn’t go faster. We shouldn’t go slower. At this pace the national debt is lower as a share of our national income in every future year than when I presented the Budget in March. And it is achieved without a rollercoaster ride in public spending.”

* “We can make faster progress in returning our banks, including RBS, to where they belong - the private sector. Indeed the sale of government assets this year will deliver the largest privatisation proceeds of all time, higher than the previous record in 1987.”

* “Britain deserves a pay rise” - introducing the “living wage”.

Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman responded:

* “The Chancellor is said to be liberated without the ties of coalition holding him back but what we have heard today suggests his rhetoric is liberated from reality. A Budget for working people? How can you make that claim when you are making working people worse off?”

* “When you’re in Opposition the temptation is to oppose everything the Government does, and believe me I feel that temptation. But we best serve this country by being a grown-up and constructive Opposition. So we will fiercely oppose policies that hit working people and we will expose policies that are unworkable.”

* “This Chancellor is renowned for his political traps, games and tactics, but that’s not what he should be doing. Normally it’s government that governs while the Opposition plays politics, but this Government is playing politics with this Budget.”

* “You can’t empower local government if you impoverish it.”

* “The hopes of working people are more important than your hopes of being the future Tory leader. We know you are personally ambitious but when the economic recovery is still fragile you should be ambitious not just for yourself but for the country.”

And the response from the trade unions:

* “A beautifully crafted con trick” - Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB.

* “Cutting social security support from the unemployed, the low paid, and sick and disabled people must rank among the lowest and most despicable acts of any government in recent times” - Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.

* “The Chancellor is giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Massive cuts in support for working people will hit families with children hardest” - TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady.