GEORGE OSBORNE finally emerged from hiding yesterday to face the Commons over his crumbling Budget but repeatedly refused to apologise for attempting to cut disability benefits again.

The Chancellor was branded a “coward” on Monday after sending out junior ministers to confirm his climbdown over plans to slash personal independence payments (PIP).

After six days of uncertainly for disabled people, he finally broke cover and admitted that the policy had been a “mistake.”

He even said “sorry” — but not for causing distress to the 370,000 vulnerable people which were set to lose £3,500 a year.

Mr Osborne said he was “sorry Iain Duncan Smith chose to leave the government” on Friday — a move which may have killed his chances of becoming Prime Minister stone dead.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said his opposite number’s conduct “calls into question his fitness for the office he now holds.

“What we’ve seen are not the actions of a Chancellor, but the grubby, incompetent, manipulations of a political chancer,” he stormed.

And, to cries of “shame” from Labour MPs, he added: “What I find most disgraceful about all of this is that there hasn’t been a word of apology from the Chancellor or anyone on that side.”

Labour MP Margaret Greenwood, who beat former Tory benefit slasher Esther McVey in Wirral West at last year’s general election, told MPs of a couple who had come to see her about the PIP cut on Friday.

The man, who is wheelchair-bound and unable to feed or dress himself, survives on £559 a month from PIP, while his partner received carer’s allowance of £63 a week.

She said: “They asked the simple question: how are we meant to cope? They were in a real state of distress.”

Ms Greenwood shook her head in disbelief as Mr Osborne fired back a torrent of party-political rhetoric, saying disabled people would not receive support “unless we had a strong economy and we controlled public spending.”

The closest Mr Osborne came to an apology was in answer to former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, who told him: “You have made a welcome U-turn, but shouldn’t you now acknowledge that was a mistake that you should say sorry for?”

Mr Osborne replied: “I have made it clear that where we’ve made a mistake, where we’ve got things wrong, we listen and we learn. That’s precisely what we’ve done.”