Video: No quick fix says Clegg

Speaking in Rotherham ,the Deputy Prime Minister said ministers could not simply "churn out initiative after initiative" in a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy.

He said it was essential to stick to the Government's plans to tackle the deficit if it was to build a base for sustainable growth.

The Sheffield Hallam MP said he would not apologise for the delay in publishing the Government's promised growth strategy until the Budget, saying it was being treated with "the utmost seriousness".

The coalition, he said, had inherited a "failed economic model" from Labour and the country needed to "wean ourselves off debt-financed growth".

"It is very tempting in a time of economic difficulty for governments to churn out initiative after initiative, in a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy or - all too often - to try and give the appearance of doing so," he said.

"And politicians can fall prey to the myth that somewhere there is a lever they can pull to generate growth, and that they should simply pull as many as possible in the hope of finding it.

"We have learned - the hard way - that an economy built on debt is built on sand. Right now, we are going through the sometimes painful process of unwinding a toxic legacy of personal, business and public debt.

"We should not fall into the trap of seeing deficit reduction and economic growth as separable. Our deficit reduction plan is a vital element in our growth plan.

"By keeping the UK out of the danger zone, and holding down the cost of borrowing, our approach is creating a stable macroeconomic platform for growth."

Mr Clegg said that he also believed there was a "moral dimension" to tackling the deficit to ensure that future generations were not saddled with the debts of their parents.

"This strikes me as little short of intergenerational theft. It is the equivalent of loading up our credit card with debt and then expecting our kids to pay it off," he said.

Earlier, Mr Clegg played down concerns over the extra income tax bill faced by better-paid people to pay for "dramatically" reducing the take from those on lower incomes.

The Liberal Democrats secured agreement from the Tories, as part of the coalition deal, to move towards increasing the personal allowance to 10,000.

A first step will kick in from April, when 500,000 will stop paying income tax altogether as the threshold is raised to 7,475.

But a respected economic think-tank calculated this week that a simultaneous drop in the higher rate threshold will put an extra 750,000 into the higher 40% bracket.

Asked if such people would have to bear an ever-greater burden as the lower threshold went up further, Mr Clegg said: "You need to find the money from somewhere because we are not going to borrow it."

There would be a "wider" rebalancing of the tax system - for instance in changes to corporation tax to stop top earners avoiding paying income tax.

But he accepted there would be consequences for the middle classes.

"We are very, very clear that we are going to take consistent, constant steps towards the ambition of lifting the allowance to 10,000 so that no-one pays any income tax on 10,000," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"As for the knock-on effects on other parts of the tax system, particularly for those people who are brought into the upper rate of tax, that is clearly something we would want to look at."

Some complaints about the effect had been exaggerated, he suggested.

"Some of the figures bandied about... create more fear than light because in many respects these are people who are paying a higher rate of tax on a very, very small proportion of their earnings.

"Some people will think 'I'm suddenly going to pay 40% on everything'. They are barely over the line."