‘Impossible numbers’: where could Jeremy Hunt’s budget cuts fall?

Government cuts to transport infrastructure could mean even more potholes, one expert said. Photograph: Simon Dack/Alamy

By now it has become a familiar feature of Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal statements. In order to entice voters with tax cuts, the chancellor has baked in significant public spending cuts backdated after the next general election.

Hunt’s spring budget on Wednesday included billions in cuts, the impact of which would not fall equally across departmental budgets because some of them – including schools and the NHS – are protected.