I t wasn’t a “nothing” budget for engine-maker Rolls-Royce. The company was handed £1.25bn from public coffers to part-fund the development of a next-generation engine for single-aisle commercial planes.

The chancellor buried this giveaway in two short sentences in the stodgy middle of his speech, presumably because it would look too much like a case of corporate welfare just after he had grumbled about the £14bn extra we’ll be paying in debt interest this year.

And it’s not as if Rolls is on its uppers. The pride of Derby is the UK’s most radically improved major company of the past few years . It sits in fifth spot in the FTSE 100 index, sporting a market value of £105bn, and has enough spare cash to spend up to £9bn on share buy-backs this year.

But there had been an air of inevitability about this subsidy ever since the company’s chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgiç, talked earlier this year about how he would “appreciate” financial support from the government in developing the UltraFan engine.…