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When the Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey presents the Budget today at around 1230, unlike other House of Commons statements, there’s no time limit on his speech. This Chancellor, delivering his first Budget, can speak for as long as he likes, perhaps taking note of one of his predecessors Benjamin Disraeli who spoke for 5 hours in 1852 but then 15 years later in 1867 delivered the shortest budget in history at just 45 minutes.

Today’s parliamentary events are surrounded by tradition; it’s the Deputy Speaker, Nusrat Ghani MP who will chair the debate, and the box in which the speech is carried can be Gladstone’s dating from 1860. But in amongst the rituals and conventions, budget day is one of the most consequential days in the democratic life of the country.

It was a former French Prime Minister who said that ‘to govern is to choose’ and this has no sharper expression than on the day of the budget. Unlike the unlimited time given to the Chancellor today, choices about taxation and decisions about spending reveal the limits that any democratic government must balance and judge. The delivery of the annual Budget is a key moment, perhaps second only to an election itself, when the citizens of a country connect in one dramatic day with the everyday consequences of the decisions of the government they elected.

All spiritual practices reflect on the meaning of money, the limits of choice, the desire for prosperity, the suffering of poverty. And all religious traditions offer wisdom on society’s economics, the push-pull levers of political power and the ever present laws of unintended consequence.

In the Christian tradition, money itself is a neutral tool in society, useful in trade, and expressive of our priorities. It’s the love of money- when the desire for more captures our hearts and the pursuit of wealth shapes our days – that’s when the New Testament vividly describes it as the root of all evil. Those who say they don’t care about money usually have a lot of it. When a person’s in debt or in the grip of sustained poverty, it’s quite simply all you can think about.

It’s sometimes said that the most moral document we have as individuals is our bank statement: it reveals to us, by virtue of what we do with our money, what matters to us most. Today we as a society collectively look at our bank statement, think about what to do next, debate the choices that will affect not only us but our neighbours too. It’s a day not just for political argument but for moral reflection, and a commitment together to decide what we believe is enough.

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