To reduce government borrowing, the March 1993 budget announced a rising wedge of tax increases – £0.5bn in the first year, £6.7bn in the second, rising to £10.3bn in the third, the aim being to give markets confidence that government borrowing was under control without damaging the recovery. Although the budget provoked a fierce reaction in some parts of the press, its reputation improved with the passage of time. After the 2009 budget, the "Sunday Times" editorialised that Lamont's budget had been so badly received that he was out of his job within two months, "but it fixed the public finances and set up the prosperity of the 1990s and beyond" and Derek Scott, Tony Blair's economic adviser from 1997 to 2003, wrote that Lamont was "rightly praised" for putting in place the post-ERM framework, that stage of Lamont's career being "due for rerating since, in addition to designing a proper framework for monetary policy (later consolidated by Bank of England independence in 1997), he also took most of the tough decisions on spending and tax to put the public finances on the road to recovery." Sir Alan Walters, whose opposition to the ERM as Mrs Thatcher's economic adviser triggered Nigel Lawson's resignation as chancellor, wrote on the buoyant state of the British economy in 2001 that "all the difficult and correct decisions that produced this happy state of affairs were taken and implemented by Norman Lamont, who thus showed himself, in his Mark 2 post ERM version, to be not only the most effective but also the bravest Chancellor since the War."