Summary

  • Labour launches its manifesto, vowing to be the party of economic responsibility

  • Ed Miliband promises every policy will be fully funded and require no "additional borrowing"

  • The Conservatives are to announce that they would extend the 'Right-to-buy' to 1.3 million housing association tenants

  • Nick Clegg says the Lib Dems will not have another coalition with the Tories if they insist on £12bn welfare cuts

  • The Lib Dems launch a "five point plan" aimed at consumers and commuters

  • There are 24 days left until the general election

Live Reporting

Kristiina Cooper, Angela Harrison and Victoria Park

  1. Nigel - meet Ivan

    Nigel Farage and Ivan LoncsarevityPA

    Nigel Farage met 62-year-old Hungarian Ivan Loncsarevity, who has lived in Colchester for five years after travelling to the UK for work. The Press Association reports that Mr Loncsarevity could not answer questions as he does not speak English.

    Steve Dalton, manufacturing manager at the factory where Mr Loncsarevity works, said he was not a UKIP supporter but did not oppose the party's proposal of an Australian-style points system designed to limit the number of immigrants: "There needs to be some controls but presumably, if we needed to fill a skills gap, we would still be able to do that under such a system."

    Finance director Gillian Hagger said: "A lot of industries in the UK do need migrant workers."

    According to PA, hinge manufacturer NICO employs 130 people, six of whom are migrants from Eastern Europe.

  2. Labour's schools 'upheaval'

    A top-down reorganisation that's gone under the radar

    Chris Cook
    Newsnight Policy Editor

    Teacher and pupilsPA

    The biggest item in Labour's education policy today is not new, but has perhaps been under-scrutinised. Their proposed introduction of "Directors of School Standards" (DSSs) is potentially quite a big deal.

    According to the original blueprints, there could be about 40-80 of these local schools tsars, overseeing the schools in their local area. So they will tend to have areas encompassing more than one local authority (of which there are 150 involved in schooling).

    The original plan for DSSs also envisaged that LAs would "join together to appoint a shared DSS across a local area or sub-region".

    These new regional bosses would be able to supervise local authority schools and academy schools alike, which would be novel. Academies currently answer to the Department for Education, while LA schools answer to the LAs.

    There's another big DfE power they will take, too. The DSSs would be "responsible for commissioning new schools where there is a local shortage of places, encouraging innovative bids from established providers, good local authorities, parents, teachers and entrepreneurs."

    Note Labour's choice of words: yes, there could be new schools run by local authorities - but new schools could also be run by other private groups, too – as free schools are. The DSSs would not mark the return of the almighty local authority.

    It would be quite a big upheaval though. It would mean transferring power from the DfE in Whitehall and its eight local commissars to as many as 80 new bodies.

  3. BBC's political correspondent Chris Mason

    @ChrisMasonBBC

    tweets:

    David Cameron has arrived at a Teesside factory as part of an election campaign visit to the north east of England

    The prime minister is meeting staff at Icon Plastics in Eaglescliffe, which is located in the marginal Stockton South constituency.

  4. Paul Waugh, editor of PoliticsHome

    @paulwaugh

    tweets:

    All eyes on @LordAshcroft poll at 4pm now. After Tories up in Populus + ICM, will a 3rd similar result kill all those 'Tory wobble' stories?

  5. Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List

    @Markfergusonuk

    tweets:

    YouGov has labour up 3. Populus has it as a tie. ICM has Tories up 6. There will be a tendency to write more about one of these polls"

  6. Latest poll

    The Guardian

    A new Guardian/ICM poll has produced a surprise Conservative lead of six points, says the newspaper, taking David Cameron’s party to 39% with Labour on 33%. Read more here.

  7. Farage defends immigration stance

    Nigel Farage has defended UKIP's policy on immigration after meeting a Hungarian factory worker.

    Mr Farage met Ivan Loncsarevity during a campaign visit to hinge manufacturer NICO in Clacton, Essex.

    Asked about the encounter and whether Mr Loncsarevity should be working in the UK, Mr Farage said:

    UKIP has never said anyone should leave the country, so the question is entirely baseless. One of the big problems that we've got in engineering is a real shortage of young people studying engineering to go into trades such as this, which is regrettable. We've got rid of technical colleges and encouraged more and more young people to go to university and study degrees which are not directly linked to industry such as this. If there's no British person trained to do that job, then that says more about us than them."

  8. Protesters greet Clegg

    Protesters and supporters waiting for Nick Clegg

    Nick Clegg's appearance at a rally outside St Helier hospital in Carshalton, south London, was disrupted by protesters campaigning against NHS privatisation and plans for the construction of incinerators.

    Activists carried signs branding the party"environmental vandals" and claiming that Mr Clegg's party and the Conservatives were "two sides of the same coin". Lib Dem supporters carrying placards of their own attempted to jostle them out of the way.

    After addressing activists alongside Carshalton and Wallington candidate Tom Brake, Mr Clegg is reported to have departed in his official car less than five minutes after arriving.

  9. Pic: Patriotic one-upmanship?

    David Cameron wore cufflinks with the Queen's face on them. Now Nigel Farage has Union flag socks. What next?

    Nigel FarageAFP

  10. Going Dutch?

    How OBR costings could change British politics

    Duncan Weldon
    Economics correspondent, BBC Newsnight

    Today’s manifesto says that Labour would “legislate to require all major parties to have their manifesto commitments independently audited by the Office for Budget Responsibility at each general election”. That might sound like quite a minor administrative change but it would have a profound impact on how British general elections work.

    The Netherland’s provides an example of how. Their equivalent of our own OBR is the CPB or Centraal PlanBureau – its name is usually translated into English as the innocuous sounding “Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis”, although a more direct translation would be the “Central Planning Bureau”.

    Dutch political parties submit their manifestos to the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis/ Central Planning Bureau which analyses them and provides detailed costings and economic modelling. That has the advantage of providing an independent and objective set of numbers that are free from political controversy or spin. But to do that the CPB needs the parties to submit detailed plans well before the election.

    The manifestos unveiled this week will almost certainly have been finished last week. That wouldn’t be an option under the Dutch system and that would be quite a big change in how our own election campaigns have traditionally run.

  11. Word count

    The Labour press office says the word count of the manifesto is 20,421.

  12. Umunna on borrowing and investment

    BBC Radio 4

    Shadow cabinet membersAFP

    More from Chuka Umunna on the World at One about Labour's investment plans:

    If you run a current budget surplus then you can spend more on capital without additional borrowing. Part of this depends on the growth in the economy. I'm being asked to spell out what our budget will be in 2018 or 2019 and I don't know what growth in the economy will be. Obviously if you get more growth you get higher income tax and corporation tax receipts which enable more investment. I can't foresee exactly what is going to happen."

  13. Populus, polling firm

    @PopulusPolls

    tweets:

    Latest Populus VI: Lab 33 (-), Con 33 (+2), LD 8 (-), UKIP 15 (-1), Greens 5 (-1), Others 6 (-1)."

  14. Ross Hawkins, BBC political correspondent

    @rosschawkins

    tweets:

    In speeches by Ed M & Ed B & on website Labour highlight fact their debt target is a share of GDP - why not in manifesto?"

  15. 'Political cross dressing'

    BBC Radio 4

    You could argue that we are seeing some political cross dressing with Labour focusing on the economy and the Conservatives campaigning at the weekend on the NHS."

    Martha Kearney, The World at One presenter

  16. Pic: Protesters at Nick Clegg event

    Anti-Lib Dem protesters

  17. 'Last man standing'

    Alistair CarmichaelPA

    The Liberal Democrats are "finished" in Scotland with Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael - the Lib Dem candidate for Orkney and Shetland - likely to be the "last man standing" after the election, according to Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson.

    This will be akin to their 1948 wipe-out. Alistair Carmichael is going to be the last man standing. You will see the Liberal Democrats in increasing desperation circle the wagons around the 11 seats in which they have an MP. You've seen from independent individual seat polling that in a number of those seats their candidate is already in third and they are not the best person to back if you're looking for an anti-SNP candidate."

  18. Get involved - Mansion tax

    Text: 61124

    Election live reader:

    I can't see how this proposed mansion tax will be introduced as quickly as Labour maintain. Firstly they have to agree how properties should be valued, who will value them and what right of appeal there will be. Next the HMRC systems will have to be amended accordingly. Introducing these changes to IT systems is likely to take about two years on its own. It would be a minimum of two years before a Labour government could collect any money never mind spend it. Likely to cost hundreds of millions to implement before then. Is this fiscal responsibility?

  19. 'I can't really answer the question...'

    David Cameron meets Newsround reporters

    What’s the saying? Never work with children or animals. Well, the politicians are ignoring that advice and taking questions from kids for the BBC’s Newsround. David Cameron was up first and declared one of their questions the best he’d been asked all campaign.

    Which other politician would you like to win if it wasn't you? Looking slightly pained, the PM replied: “Obviously, if I thought someone else should win I wouldn't be standing myself. So I cant really answer the question… I think it’s too difficult to say I’d like someone else to win... I’m afraid I'm quite keen on winning." See more.

  20. Get involved

    Text: 61124

    Election live reader:

    The mess was caused by the bankers and not the last Lab Govt. I know it doesn't fit in with the Tory narrative but that's how it goes. Giving the Tories another 5 years will allow them to introduce more of their petty anti-normal people ideologies.