Budget 2010 reaction: 'The most astonishing budget of modern times'

The chancellor’s emergency budget, which froze public-sector pay for two years and laid out departmental budget cuts of around 25 per cent, has gained a mixed reaction from HR and business experts.John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the CIPD, said Osborne’s speech “must surely rank as the most astonishing UK budget statement in modern times,” and that the deficit reduction plan represented an “unprecedented fiscal squeeze”.