Osborne cites business support on tax following Brown attack

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said more than 80 of the country's leading chief executives had backed his party's opposition to the plan, warning it would kill the recovery and the Prime Minister was "alone in the world" when making the argument.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post as he hit the campaign trail, Mr Osborne also dismissed as "nonsense" accusations by the Liberal Democrats that he was planning a secret VAT rise.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg yesterday stood in front of new campaign posters claiming families would have to pay nearly 400 a year more under Tory proposals to increase the tax to 20.5 per cent.

Mr Osborne said: "Complete nonsense, we have made it very clear that our plans do not involve changing VAT. There are no plans to increase VAT.

"The biggest risk to the economy is Labour's jobs tax. That will kill the recovery.

"You don't have to take my word for it, the people who run companies like Sainsbury's or the steel firm Corus, have come out and said this is a tax on jobs.

"They also say that the plans the Conservatives have put forward are better for the Yorkshire economy.

"We have got Gordon Brown, making this argument alone in Britain, and pretty much alone in the world. The Conservatives argue lets get to grips with wasteful government spending."

Mr Brown denounced Tory claims they could scrap the bulk of next year's planned NI rise for employers and workers, saying they were based on flimsy, "back-of-envelope" calculations which could not be delivered.

He said the proposal to make 12bn of savings failed to take into account the 15bn he claims the Government is already saving.

The Prime Minister said: "You cannot effectively get 27bn in one year –which is equivalent to half of the education budget – without laying thousands of people off and without losses of businesses and loss of jobs.

"What the people of this country need to ask themselves is this – do the British people really want to gamble your economic future on the basis of a back-of-envelope set of calculations like this?"

At Labour's first Press conference of the election campaign in London, Chancellor Alistair Darling accused the Conservatives of double-counting savings that had already been "banked" by the Government.

But Mr Osborne said their figures came from Labour's own advisors, and if people in Yorkshire had doubts about his ability to lead the economic recovery, they had a clear choice at the election.

"I have been doing this job as Shadow Chancellor for five years and have consistently made the argument that an economy built on debt cannot last – we are now living with the consequences," he said.

"We are in a region where unemployment has gone up, where family incomes have been squeezed, where there is the danger of another tax on income.

"We have got to avoid a jobs tax. Business leaders are saying, we support George Osborne's plans, these are people who often do not normally get involved in politics but feel strongly about this issue."

Mr Osborne, a close friend of Mr Cameron's, said should they win the election and the Prime Minister decided to replace him, he would accept the decision.

He said: "David Cameron as Prime Minister has the right to put whoever he likes into his Cabinet, that comes with the job.

"But we are a strong team, and it is not a team of two."