“People will conclude that you have not done it, is that a fair conclusion?” Justin Webb asked finally. The answer ought to have been a simple “No” but Hoban stuttered instead about distributional analysis “across a range of households” and complained that Webb was asking for too much detail.

Revealingly, Hoban continued in the same vein. He said that the Coalition did “more distributional impact” and carried out the “best and most detailed analysis of the effects on families and households” for the budget than any government had done before. Clearly, Osborne, Hoban and the Lib Dem Alexander do have access to all the Treasury’s very detailed models of economic impact and we should believe Hoban. So there can be no question of any consequences of the budget being unintended or unforeseen. They have all been introduced in full knowledge of their “distributional impact … on families and households”.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies says that these tax and benefit changes announced “hit the poorest households, more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash let alone percentage terms”. They are “clearly regressive”. Here is clear evidence, out of the hapless Hoban’s own mouth, that that was the intention all along.

However, when it comes to gender, race and disability, the Treasury seems to have done no modelling at all. Theresa May, in a now well-publicised letter, in June, told Treasury Ministers to assess the potential impact since “there are real risks that people ranging from ethnic minorities to women to the disabled and the old would be disproportionately affected”.

House of Commons library research shows that of the £8billion to be raised in the next financial year by the direct tax and benefit changes in Osborne’s budget, almost £6billion will come from women, with only 28% of the cuts impacting on men. The Fawcett Society has already started a High Court action on the basis of this unfair gender impact. Slashing maternity support, attendance allowances, the state second pensions and freezing child benefit all impact disproportionately on women and are in addition to public sector job cuts which are similarly likely to hurt women more.

Hoban’s failure today to say that race and disability impact had been assessed must now positively invite similar claims from these two sectors. Since BME and the disabled are already amongst the poorest, it seems likely that they too will suffer disproportionately, from a budget which takes 5% of the income from the bottom 10% of families and only 1% from the richest 10%. However close analysis needs to be done before race or disability representatives join the litigation.

Fawcett’s application will ask the court to review Budget decisions to see if they comply with the Equality Act requiring all public authorities to have “due regard” to gender equality. The Equality and Human Rights Commission wrote to the government for assurance that they would comply with the similar race and disability duties too. Labour’s laws require government to focus its efforts where they are most likely to reduce inequality and to do so they have to carry out Disability, Race and Gender Impact Assessments so that they can know where the burden of their action will fall and act accordingly.

When trying to deal with the Equality Act issue on Today, Hoban sounded like a man with a mantra. He must have been told that failure to assess gender impact will have to be defended by saying that family assessment is enough and how families split their cash between male and female is not the government’s business. So, he reiterated how detailed the family assessment had been again and again but it was a bad mistake. First, it is a weak answer to the sex discrimination case because the Treasury does have the statutory equality duty and these cuts will make women poorer, weaken their financial independence in a family context and seriously impoverish female lone parents. Secondly it doesn’t work as a defence against failing to assess the race and disability impact. And thirdly, it did give comprehensively away that this government had done its detailed family sums and knows quite well that its budget will take the most from those households that the Institute for Fiscal Studies sees as having the least.