Comment by Simon Hull, Managing Director of Conister Bank

"Clearly, this is a politically driven budget with an eye on the approaching UK election.

"Darling has avoided making the big decisions with promises to reduce the budget deficit by half but with very little detail on the specifics.

"Fiscal projections are based upon a highly optimistic economic assumption, the 3.25% year on year in 2011 are about double leading economist projections.

"Several measures are politically driven the announcement regarding Dominica, Grenada and Belize being the most obvious.

"Of the state owned Banks, clearly RBS continues to struggle and from a systemic risk stand point it is surprising to see that the FSA will look to speeding up and simplifying licensing process for new banks. 

"However, Darling’s commitment is only that they will 'look into it', therefore not committing himself to anything."