CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown will present his 11th and almost certainly last budget on March 21 as his succession to Prime Minister Tony Blair's job this summer looks more or less assured.

The annual set-piece event will be watched even more closely than usual for a taste of what Brown's premiership priorities will be as he prepares to take on a resurgent opposition Conservative party under David Cameron.

Brown looks unlikely to change his forecast of growth of 2.75 to 3.25 per cent for this year or 2.5 to 3 per cent for 2008, as it is only a few months since the Pre-budget Report.

Nor is there much scope for any big tax giveaways.

But Mr Brown will likely introduce a package of "green" measures, in the wake of a Treasury report that predicted catastrophe unless steps were taken to combat climate change. He also looks likely to bring forward some of the announcements due in this summer's Comprehensive Spending Review, which is expected to announce tough expenditure limits on ministries outside priority areas.

Health and education are likely beneficiaries of any generosity, but overall spending for the next few years will probably be the tightest since Labour's early days in the late 1990s.

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