The axe falls yet again So where could the state find billions more?

It has become a familiar feature of Jeremy Hunt's fiscal statements. To entice voters with tax cuts, the chancellor has baked in significant public spending cuts, which are backdated until after the next general election.

- Eleni Courea,Ben Quinn, Haroon Siddique

Hunt's budget included billions in cuts, the impact of which would not fall equally across departmental budgets because some of them - including schools and the NHS - were protected.

Under the Treasury's assumptions, "unprotected" government departments will see a 13% real-terms cut in their budgets from 2025-26 to 2028-29.

This collectively amounts to a £19bn cut, comparable to the round of austerity ushered in by David Cameron and George Osborne after 2010.

Crucially, virtually no one thinks these cuts will actually be implemented, not least because the Conservatives are thought to be unlikely to be in government by next year.

Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: "The £19bn of cuts to unprotected public services after the next election are three-quarters the size of those delivered in the early 2010s. The idea that such cuts can be delivered in the face of already faltering public services is a fiscal fiction."

Nick Davies, programme director for public services at the Institute for Government, said: "The government has not spelled out in any detail how the impossible numbers that it has pencilled in would be delivered on a department-by-department basis." The responsibility for working out departmental finances is going to fall to the next government.

This is how £19bn of cuts could affect the various departments:

Justice 

Experts believe that the department bearing the brunt will be the Ministry of Justice, which is already grappling with overflowing prisons and a huge court backlog.

The budget came on the same day that a senior judge announced plans to deal with 181 rape cases that have been delayed at the crown court for over two years - an illustration of the pressures that the system is already under.