CUT staffing costs, encourage enterprise, slash red tape, invest in skills and simplify tax – that’s the call from Hampshire businesses ahead of what’s being billed as the most important budget for a generation later today.

Over the past ten days, the Daily Echo has reported the wishlists of local business leaders in the Be A Darling column.

At 12.30pm today they will find out if Chancellor Alistair Darling has been listening.

He is widely expected to announce a further £10 billion in Whitehall efficiency savings – on top of the £5 billion already pencilled in – as he attempts to get public finances back on track.

With tax revenues collapsing in the face of the recession , borrowing could be on course to hit £160 billion this year – leaving public services to face a spending squeeze in the years ahead.

Plans to raise taxes for earners on above £150,000 to more than 45 per cent have already run into difficulty after being dismissed by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies as likely to raise just a third of the £1.6 billion he is hoping for.

Mr Darling has already made clear that he will sharply downgrade his economic forecasts when he delivers his statement in the Commons.

It is now thought that he will predict that output will shrink by at least three per cent this year – making it the worst year for the British economy since the end of the Second World War.

Meanwhile it is feared he will also admit that the taxpayer will not recoup the full cost of bailing out the banks and may be faced with a bill of up to £60 billion.

He is expected to put back to 2010 his predicted date for Britain’s economic recovery, which he previously said would begin in the second half of this year.