If Alistair Darling had been sitting a mathematics exam instead of presenting the UK’s annual Budget last month, the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have scraped a pass, but only after raising examiners’ eyebrows with some of his answers and losing marks for not showing the workings behind his sums.

In a report published today on the 2009 UK Budget, the influential Treasury Select Committee conceded the Government may actually meet the economic growth forecasts it laid out last month, and agreed with Darling that current times are both "extraordinary and uncertain".