Tory party darling Dan Hannan has attacked on politicians' demands that banks lend more. But his views are far outmoded, ignoring the taxpayer-funded bailouts that saved the banks and capital banks could save if they halted massive bonus packages.

Having had the dubious pleasure of reading the coalition's green paper boldly titled ‘Financing a private sector recovery', I can safely say that I haven't read such vacuous contradictory rubbish in a long time.

Cameron shifts away from the Lib Dem ‘Greek defence' but rushed cuts and lack of plan for growth could risk the UK ‘turning Japanese'

In contrast to the Tories' ideological commitment to big cuts, Alistair Darling today made the right judgement between frontline services and halving the  deficit

Yesterday George Osborne had a chance to silence his critics. His Mais lecture was his opportunity to set out what the Conservatives would do to bring down the budget deficit, how quickly, and how far they would reduce government borrowing. But, once again, Osborne ducked the tough questions leaving the public as much in the dark as before.

Although we have faced a global economic recession, the lasting routes out of it will be local and regional. Every region must have a strategy for re-building and re-balancing its economy, based on local strengths and comparative advantages. Although national policies for supporting the macro-economy are critical, jobs and industries need a local framework.

Expectations ahead of George Osborne’s speech today were high. Osborne has attacked every single measure that Alistair Darling has taken to support British families and businesses through the recession, and every effort taken by the Labour government to invest in the jobs and skills of the future, to ensure that, unlike in the 1980s and 90s, a generation of young people are not confined to the scrap heap.

Yesterday’s unemployment figures show that 2.4 million people are now unemployed. So, although bank profits may be recovering, the labour market continues to deteriorate. Unemployment is set to continue to rise through the rest of the year and probably for the first half of next year too. The full human cost of the recession is still to be felt as the number of people out of work climbs towards three million.

It was August 2007 when the edifice of the financial services model began to crumble. The term sub-prime loans entered the lexicon, swiftly followed by special purpose vehicles, collateralised debt obligations and the Libor rate. Today’s white paper, unveiled by Alistair Darling ensures we will not go back to the days of light-touch regulation, however much the bankers might like to return to business as usual.

I will leave it to psephologists to find historical parallels for Labour’s poll performance on June 4th, but with our share of the vote down to 15% in the European elections, it’s clear that we’ll need to look far back into the annals of history. With a year at most to turn things around a plan to re-connect with voters and win again is needed.

Our government rightly led the way at the G20 Summit in London in calling for reform of our beleaguered financial framework. We now need to work closely with our European colleagues in turning these ambitions into something more concrete, before the worst of the financial crisis is forgotten.

The chancellor delivered his budget yesterday against an un-envious background. The whole world is in recession, trade has fallen off a cliff and all countries are facing the dilemma of fiscal stimulus v balanced budgets. In those circumstances yesterday's budget got the balance right.

We know now the causes of the financial crisis – excessive risk taking by banks encouraged by an incentive structure that was short-term and asymmetric (rewarding high returns but not clawing back if things went wrong). This culture was exacerbated by an over-trusting regulatory regime, an insufficiently independent credit rating industry and institutional investors who didn't exercise necessary oversight. Collectively, they failed to ask the tough questions that might have reined in the excesses of the bankers.

When Alistair Darling unveiled his pre-budget report in November it was clear that the UK, along with most other economies globally, was entering recession. However, as time progresses – and the economic times move particularly fast right now, it is clear the challenges we face are greater than we anticipated even two months ago. So, what more can we do to offer help to families and businesses? And what can we do to ensure that when the recovery comes we are in a position to benefit?