Summary

  • Conservatives welcome a letter from over 100 company bosses backing a “Conservative-led government”

  • Labour publishes its own letter signed by “people from all walks of life” as it pledges a crackdown on zero hours contracts

  • Lib Dems discuss plans to triple paternity leave to six weeks

  • Ed Balls and Nick Clegg take their campaigns to Scotland

  • There are 36 days until the general election

Live Reporting

Aiden James, Kristiina Cooper and Tim Fenton

  1. Michael Crick, political correspondent, C4 News

    @MichaelLCrick

    tweets:

    Ukip officials refuse to comment on late-night Nigel Farage visit to Ed Miliband's home. Lasted 3 hours, say sources"

  2. 'Unprecedented intervention'

    George Osborne

    George Osborne has emerged from the Treasury to voice his delight at the Telegraph's letter from business leaders. "This is an unprecedented intervention in a British general election. Over 100 business people employing over half a million people leading some of Britain’s best known companies from Primark to the Prudential and from BP to Mothercare, have spoken out." He's then asked a question about the Tories refusing to offer more details about spending cuts - but simply replies by saying the Conservatives have set out a "balanced" approach.

    Their message couldn’t be clear: we have a Conservative economic plan that is working and creating jobs, and if we change course those jobs will be threatened and the recovery will be put at risk.

    George Osborne

  3. Jason Beattie, Daily Mirror political editor

    @JBeattieMirror

    tweets:

    Wonder how many of the business leaders who signed Telegraph letter back the Tory policy on Europe. Look forward to finding out in 2017"

  4. Zero hours intervention

    BBC Radio 5 Live

    Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna says Labour's policy will cover 90% of people on zero-hours contacts. But they're not going to be outlawed altogether, he says - people won't be forced to switch from them. "Really you have a choice as a government - you either leave it to the market or you do something about it, and Labour's going to do something about it."

  5. Matt Chorley, political editor, MailOnline

    @MattChorley

    tweets:

    After 'Bill Somebody' fiasco, Labour was v keen to stress it had business backers. No good now dismissing list of 100 as just 'Tories'"

  6. 'Tackling exploitation'

    BBC Radio 5 Live

    Chuka UmunnaPA

    Now here's Chuka Umunna on Labour's zero hour contracts policy. Perhaps one problem might be that it's actually hard to define what "zero hours" relates to. The lack of a guarantee of minimum hours is what it ultimately comes down to, Mr Umunna says. "It's the exploitation, if we're elected on May 7th, we'll deal with it in our Queen's Speech."

  7. Parental leave

    BBC Radio 5 Live

    "The bottom line is when you have a child it does turn your life upside down," the Lib Dems' Jo Swinson tells 5 Live. "Given that both men and women are part of the workforce, there's an inevitable knock-on effect there." She argues that helping people through the transitional period of parenthood will ultimately help companies keep talented staff. The Lib Dems want to triple paternity leave.

  8. Lib Dem role

    BBC Radio 5 Live

    Jo SwinsonPA

    Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem equalities minister, is on the phone on BBC Radio 5 Live. What does she make of the business leaders' letter to the Telegraph? The economy's back on track, she says. "I'm delighted the role the Liberal Democrats have played in making that happen."

  9. Two schools, two perspectives

    BBC Radio 4 Today

    Two schools in the North West offered very different perspectives on the election campaign to the Today programme’s Sancha Berg. In Wyre and Preston North, pupils were very much aware of the differences between the parties. Not so much in the less affluent Blackpool South constituency, where fewer than half said they would vote. Listen to her report in full.

  10. Barry Sheerman, Labour candidate

    @BarrySheerman

    tweets:

    Why when Stuart Rose was interviewed @BBCr4today was the fact that he is a Tory Member of the House of Lords not mentioned?"

  11. Iain Watson, BBC political correspondent

    @iainjwatson

    tweets:

    official stats from ONS suggest around 700,000 employees have a zero hours contract as main job but admit difficult to be accurate #ge2015"

  12. Miliband on mud-throwing

    BBC Breakfast

    Ed Miliband

    This campaign has got off to rather a personal start, with David Cameron using his Downing Street exit to directly attack Ed Miliband and Ed Balls complaining in an Evening Standard interview yesterday that the prime minister is “a bit of a troll”. That was a “light-hearted remark”, Mr Miliband says this morning. He told the BBC’s Bill Turnbull: “David Cameron is the guy who stood outside Downing Street in a way no prime minister has done for the past 10 elections and he talked about me.” A more accurate rendering of that would be “meeee”). He adds: “He’s got five years more that he wants as prime minister and he talks about me. Now look, I don’t care [about] David Cameron throwing mud at me, what I care about is what happens to the British people in the next five years.”

  13. Ruth Davidson, Scottish Conservative leader

    @RuthDavidsonMSP

    tweets:

    Ooh, the glamour - R4 Today i/v was pre-recorded in a van, in a Premier Inn car park at 6am in my Cookie Monster PJs

    Ruth Davidson's pyjamasRuth Davidson

  14. Analysis

    Robert Peston
    Business editor

    You can see bias within the economic community and within the business community and it’s incredibly important not to assume that one group is right and one group is wrong. I think broadly the conventional view among macro-economists right now would be that, in terms of looking at how the deficit should be reduced in the future, the majority of academic economists would say that Labour’s approach of being able to borrow to invest is a better approach than the Conservative approach of trying to generate an overall surplus. They’re not necessarily right about that but the notion that business leaders are the only source of wisdom on what is right for the economy is important to question.

  15. Sophy Ridge, Sky News political correspondent

    @SophyRidgeSky

    tweets:

    Understand that Conservative Party Co Chairman Andrew Feldman helped organise today's letter from business leaders in the Telegraph"

  16. Boosting Scotland

    Just as Scottish Labour’s Jim Murphy suggested the mansion tax could help pay for Scottish nurses earlier this year, now Labour is suggesting that Scotland is in store for more money because they’d spend more and distribute more. Today Ed Balls’ messaging is going to be about spreading the benefits of growth for all of the UK, including Scotland. Labour are in essence only stating the obvious, but doing so could end up being rather provocative in terms of how it’s likely to go down in parts of England.

  17. 'More to be done'

    BBC Radio 4 Today

    Lord Stuart Rose

    Lord Rose, the former Marks & Spencer boss and Conservative peer, says the British economy has made “great progress” since 2010. “The government inherited a pretty difficult situation five years ago… there is a lot more to be done… and what we have to do is make sure we keep that work going,” he tells Today. His name features on the list of 100 senior business figures who have backed the coalition’s economic approach in a letter to today’s Telegraph. He’s not so convinced by Labour’s zero-hours contracts proposal, though, pointing out Tony Blair failed to fix it a decade ago. “10 years later we’re all trying, but you can’t do it by legislation.”

  18. Kamal Ahmed, BBC business editor

    @bbckamal

    tweets:

    Lord Stuart Rose tells @BBCr4today 'The good news at the moment is we have this flourishing environment' for business"

  19. Jim Pickard, chief political correspondent for the Financial Times

    @PickardJE

    tweets:

    Labour's statistical calculation is that there are more low-paid workers than high-paid executives."

  20. Throwing mud

    Ed Miliband

    I don't care if David Cameron is throwing mud at me, I'm focused on the British people."

    Ed Miliband, Labour leader