The Budget: Hammond's budget all about tweaks - spending headlines mostly in the millions rather than the billions

Philip Hammond delivered his first budget today. Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond looked relaxed, even made jokes, as he delivered his first - and apparently Britain's last - Spring Budget. The Chancellor's budget was one tweaks, all framed as adjustments to increase fairness. He began by summarising current economic trends, noting the highest number of women in employment ever. Growth projections are up slightly, but a projected drop in borrowing is only short term.

The long term economic plan of his predecessor George Osborne, to eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus to whittle away the national debt, was much delayed. Its aims where pushed back again by Hammond today. The promised fiscal surplus now not likely be seen until a long way into the 2020s - at least.

As for spending, the numbers he was pitching were all notably in the millions rather than the billions. £200 million for school repairs. £100 million for A&Es. A few hundred million for devolved administrations. £700m for councils to tackle urban congestion. The one exception appeared to £2 billion for Social Care - yet that was immediately qualified as being spread over three years.

Those spending commitments were companied by big companies seeing Corporation Tax fall again, as planned, to 17%. Perhaps as a counter to the criticism Conservatives have faced for their tax cuts for those at the top end, Hammond did however announce a halving of Director-shareholders' tax-free dividend allowance - noting it as a very generous tax break for investors.

For income taxes and wages that affect the overwhelming majority of people, the Personal Income Tax Allowance and the National Living Wage will both increase, to £11,500 and £7.50 respectively. The Universal Credit taper rate will also be reduced from 65% to 63% for earnings over allowances. Yet the overall positive impact of these is likely to be slim.

It is not surprising then that Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Chancellor's budget as one of "utter complacency". Corbyn painted a picture of people in precarious work - unsure of where they'll find work or what money they may make tomorrow, queueing at food banks and one of a million working households getting housing benefit because working pay doesn't cover the rent - for whom there were few measures.

The Labour leader expressed anger that public servants have still seen no pay rise in seven years, due to the Government's freeze on pay, and that no funding security has been given to the NHS despite there being an obvious crisis, despite the fact that corporations are still going to get their year on year tax cut.

The Chancellor's budget has offered only a range of small spending increases, in a very concise series of measures, and it is hard to see them as sufficient. Analysts, such as Kamal Ahmed at the BBC, have characterised the budget as representing 'pain delayed' - taking advantage of the short term boost that Government finances are experiencing this year.

This is not the start of a public investment led drive to build a path out of austerity. With the debt and deficit still hanging heavily over Britain, these feel like stop-gap measures to assuage certain political pressures in the present, and to ease the way to the further austerity that waits ahead.

Autumn Statement: Austerity hasn't worked, yet Chancellor's response is much smaller than Britain's big problems demand

House building pledge typifies problems with Chancellor Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement - it's too little action to tackle a much bigger problem. Photograph: Regency Houses from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, described the Autumn Statement as a budget that does not make up for six wasted years. That after all of the sacrifice, over more than half a decade, despite continuous failures, austerity will continue.

That is not an unfair assessment. For this statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond had to juggle the policy inheritance from George Osborne, meeting the promise of Theresa May to help those just getting by, and the economic pressures that are depressing growth, disincentivising investment and pushing up debt.

The result has been a budget statement that sticks close to the status quo, with only some token, already scheduled, easing measures: the personal allowance advancing to £11,500, the 'national' living wage to £7.50, and the welfare withdrawal taper rate down by just two pence in the pound.

The Chancellor's focus remains upon the broader economy, not least with tax cuts continuing for big business as Corporation Tax falls again to 17%. The promise that these subsidies, and policies like the productivity fund, make to people is that if they help the economy, that prosperity will extend to them.

Yet many of the Chancellor's announcements were effectively cancelled out by the facts. He lauded the fact that the UK has its highest employment and lowest unemployment, with a labour market recovery serving everyone. Yet much of the new work has already been reported as being unstable, insecure and precarious.

Despite confirming plans to increase public investment, that comes on the back of years of delayed, stalled or unfunded infrastructure investment plans that have been shifted from announcement to announcement. Meanwhile economic growth is depressed, private investment remains low and debt is still rising.

And on house building, a necessary step to tackling the damaging housing crisis, Hammond has said he will lead a step change in progress on getting them built. Yet his commitment extended to just 40,000 new homes - a long way short of the hundreds of thousands needed, let alone tackle prices and rents escalating beyond what could be credibly referred to as affordable.

While Conservative spokespeople on the cycling news coverage are keen to deflect their failures onto the uncertain circumstances of the times, the reality is that six years of fiscally conservative government has led to a rise in borrowing and a vast increase, even a doubling, of the national debt. Austerity hasn't worked.

Those 'just about managing', as the Tory government labels them, have made huge sacrifices - with less welfare support, with their frontline services embattled, with work that is more precarious for lower pay. But after six years, there is still no pay off. There is no easing. There is still no succour for falling living standards.

If the Government is serious about helping the poorest, the most vulnerable, those most distant from opportunities and living precarious lives, it needs an alternative plan. Fiscal discipline, bringing down debts to reduce the cost of servicing them, is important. But no major economy is working well enough to provide prosperity for the people they're supposed to serve without help from public funds.

Progressives have to construct an alternative plan, that can return more prosperity to the communities that have made big sacrifices to achieve it, but have been alienated from the rewards by austerity. That means getting on with the work that has been put off, like building homes and infrastructure, tackling the cartels that lock communities out of the product of their own resources, with ideas like community energy co-ops, and doing more to support the most vulnerable with healthcare, social care and welfare.