Budget Day! Philip Hammond delivered his first proper Budget since Mrs May became PM and promptly lumbered the aspirational self-employed with a tax rise. The Budget was preceded with PMQs where the PM made mincemeat of Mr Corbyn, poor man. He tries his best but comes across as the angry campaigner he's always been, rather than a PM in waiting. Then it was Mr Hammond's turn. He spoke for an hour and delivered a safe Budget. There were no thrills or spills, but I did not like the rise in NI for the self employed. These are aspirational people who I thought we were trying to encourage. Countless jobs have been created by the self-employed and I do not see the sense of raising their taxes. The figures are still truly terrifying. We have a debt of £1.7 trillion, that's almost £62,000 for every household. Every year, we spent £50 billion on debt interest - that's more than we spend on Defence and policing combined! With that in mind, Mr Hammond played safe and except for the rise in NI he was successful. There are more details about the Budget on my website and of course there's always Hansard if you'd like to study Mr Hammond's speech in full. I had to leave the Chamber as Mr Corbyn was in full flow as both our European Scrutiny Committee and the Defra Select Committee were taking oral evidence from farms minister George Eustice. It was a most interesting two hours and, for those wanting to know what might happen to farming and fishing post Brexit, I would suggest you follow the session on Hansard. I got back to my office just after 1700 and remained there working steadily through a mass of correspondence and other matters until the evening.