Ed Balls said a future Conservative government would have to slash NHS spending or raise VAT to achieve its cuts targets
HSBC bosses were grilled by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee
Nick Clegg said the UK could become the 'powerhouse of Europe' under Lib Dem growth plans
David Cameron unveiled plans for a big expansion in the number of free schools in England
Government strategy for stopping violent extremism is "toxic", a former senior Muslim police officer said
There are 59 days until the general election
BBC News Channel
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has hopped studios to the BBC News Channel. She says "it's a bit rich" of the Labour Party to criticise the government's policies when they took 200,000 primary school places out of the system during a baby boom.
Here's a bit more information, external for those of you who are interested in the government's latest Lloyds sale. George Osborne said the proceeds would be ploughed into reducing the national debt.
tweets:, external Today's Guardian seat projection - Tories 274, Lab 271, SNP 52, LDs 27, Ukip 4, Greens 1 Read more., external
Prime ministers should have to show that changes to the civil service are in the public interest - and not being made for political gain - think tank the Institute for Government says., external Director of research Tom Gash said: "When money is tight, there can be no justification for ill-thought-through restructuring that costs millions and helps no one."
Norman Smith
BBC Assistant Political Editor
On the subject of the new Conservative poster - showing Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond's pocket (see 07:50) - get ready to hear that line a lot in the weeks to come. The Tories think they've identified a key weakness in Labour's electoral armour, and they think that pushing the idea of some cosy SNP-Labour deal could hurt Ed Miliband's vote on both sides of the border. There's a real view in Tory circles that this is an Achilles' heel for Mr Miliband.
Norman Smith
BBC Assistant Political Editor
The headline from Ed Balls' speech today is that George Osborne will have to cut twice as much as he has publicly acknowledged - £60bn rather than £30bn - if he's chancellor after 7 May. To back up that assertion, Labour are publishing a dossier in which they say they have crunched the numbers. It's a dossier designed to give everyone the heebee geebees, and of course, it comes in the run-up to the Budget next week.
BBC News Channel
Image source, PAStability in education is really important so we'll keep the schools that already exist, Mr Hunt says. We'll stop the programme when we come in, but we're "committed to the pipeline" - the free schools currently in the planning stage, he adds.
BBC News Channel
"We want parents and teachers to be able to set up new schools, that's absolutely right, but we want it to be in areas of real need," the shadow education secretary continues. We also want qualified teachers in the classroom - not always the case in free schools - and some "transparency" about the finances of new schools, he adds.
tweets:, external Good morning! It's 59 days till the 2015 election. Latest YouGov/Sun poll: Conservative 34%, Labour 33%, Ukip 15%, Lib Dem 8%, Green 5%
BBC News Channel
The research is "incredibly shoddy" - a damning indictment of the Policy Exchange report on free schools from Tristram Hunt. He says there have been falling standards of literacy identified in some free schools.
BBC News Channel
Shadow education secretary Tristam Hunt says parents will be shocked to learn that the government has "raided the budget" of schools struggling with too many pupils to pay for new free schools.
tweets:, external Am I alone in thinking that the new Tory poster looks like Miliband is in Berlusconi's pocket? #BungaBunga (see 07:50 entry)
tweets:, external Dal Babu & Peter Fahy tell @BBCr4today " don't put Muslims in a separate box" re strategy for safeguarding children/preventing extremism
BBC Radio 4
Image source, cctvPeter Fahy does admit that one problem of the Prevent programme has been to create the impression that the police not parents are primarily responsible for preventing radicalisation among children. Those remarks, of course, come following the demand for an apology from the parents of the three British teenager girls who have travelled to Syria. They want the Metropolitan Police to say sorry for not passing on "vital" information they say may have helped them to intervene in the trio's plans.
BBC Radio 4
Peter Fahy, the Association of Chief Police Offices lead on counter-terrorism, says the Prevent programme has had tough times - particularly due to anger over the Iraq War - but has overall, been a very successful programme. The crucial thing is if you ask Muslim communities if they have confidence in policing, their level of trust is actually higher than that trust within the population at large, he says. More on this story.
tweets:, external And worth remembering, whatever you read about Labour and SNP, HUGE hostility btw the parties in Scotland
Image source, PAThe Treasury must do more to prepare for a "worst case scenario" in the financial system, a group of MPs is warning. The Public Administration Committee said there was a "surprising and urgent gap" in risk planning. "We still have institutions which are 'too big to fail' but with so much national borrowing capacity used up, they may prove 'too big to save' if it happens again," said chairman and Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin.
Not to be outdone on the speech front, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable will appear together today to give a speech about the economy. They will say the UK could become the "powerhouse of Europe" under proposals from the Lib Dems, which include ring-fencing the £4.6bn science budget, with a commitment to increasing it in real terms once the deficit is eliminated.
tweets:, external Nicky Morgan on #r4today: I think for-profit education is something that would make me feel uncomfortable.
BBC Radio 4
Can you rule out schools being run by companies for profit? "Yes, I can," Nicky Morgan says. We don't want that and it's not needed, she insists.