Labour leader, Ed Miliband today pledged to British voters that his party will be prudent with the UK's finances, if elected, offering guarantees that spending will be cut and election promises will be paid for without borrowing.
Speaking in Manchester at his party's election manifesto launch, Mr Miliband said, unlike former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he was promising during an election campaign that spending outside of health, education and international aid "is going to fall until the books are balanced".
Since 2010, Labour has struggled with voters who believe that its spending record in power during the Blair/Brown years helped prompt the financial crisis, and deepened its effects.
Rejecting both arguments, Mr Miliband defended the extra spending on health and other public services ordered by Labour: “Absolutely we were right to invest in those things.”
The Conservatives, he said, claim the deficit caused the financial crisis: “The opposite is true, it was the financial crisis that caused the deficit to go as high as it did, and we have got to get it down.”
However, he conceded that Labour has to win voters’ trust on the issue, a concern illustrated by Labour’s decision to include “a budget responsibility lock” in the opening page of its election manifesto
“Every policy in this manifesto is paid for. Not one commitment requires additional borrowing,” it says, “A Labour government will cut the deficit every year. The first of Labour’s first budget will be: ‘This budget cuts the deficit every year.’”
In a double-headed attack, the Labour leader accused the Conservatives of making a rash of spending promises in the last week, “worth £20 billion quid”, without being able to show how any of them can be covered.
Meanwhile, he accused the Scottish National Party - Labour's principal enemy in Scotland - of being prepared to inflict a £7.6 billion cut in Scotland's current spending in its drive to win full control over Scottish taxes and spending.
“People have to make their judgments. Some parties in this election are coming along and saying that we don’t have to make any difficult decisions, no reduction in spending at all and that it is all going to be easy.
“That is not the route that we are taking,” said Miliband, who said he could not “be clearer on the deficit” - that it will be cut every year; that the UK will have a current account surplus “as soon as possible”, with national debt falling.
