British government delivers last pre-election budget

The coalition government in Britain came to power in the dark days of May 2010, with a promise to get the country's finances back on track.

Weeks later, it unveiled an emergency budget of tax increases and spending cuts.

Five years on, finance minister George Osborne today returned to Parliament, to deliver his last budget before a general election in just seven weeks' time.

Mr Osborne predicted that Britain's debts, relative to the size of the economy, will fall for the next five years.

Some of the billions of dollars raised by selling public stakes in banks will be used to reduce that debt.

Business leaders called it a "solid and responsible" budget.

But Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, wasn't impressed.

So - just how widely felt are the benefits of Britain's recovering economy?

Our reporter Lucy Burton has been to the southern English town of Aldershot to find out.

Five years ago, the coalition here in Britain predicted that government borrowing would decline from 11 per cent of the size of the UK economy, to just 1.1 per cent this financial year.

But it still stands at around 5 per cent.

The Taxpayers' Alliance is a British pressure group which campaigns for lower taxes.

We asked its chief executive, Jonathan Isaby, if he thought enough had been done to cut Britain's debt pile.

So - should more have been done to cut the burden of government debt on UK taxpayers?

For another view, we turned to the British economist Roger Bootle.