tweets:, external Is Ed Balls actually trying to play the #LabourSupportstheMilitary line? Jeez I admire his chutzpah. @UKIP pledge 2% gdp for military

Will you categorically rule out a deal with the SNP, Mr Balls is asked. He replies: "The SNP have said they don't want a coalition. It's not part of our plans, we don't want one, we don't need one. What we want is a majority Labour government." Not sure if that counts as categorical, but Mr Balls says it's "a very clear answer".

We've had a scare story from David Cameron about the SNP and Labour in the last 48 hours, says Mr Balls. "Why do you think he's doing that?" he asks. Because "he doesn't want to debate the debates" and he doesn't want to discuss the truth about his spending cuts.

Ed Balls is taking questions. Aren't you just indulging in scaremongering, he is asked? He says people said similar things about some of the warnings Labour made ahead of the last election - about cuts to tax credits and an increase in VAT - and they were right about all of them.

tweets:, external Ed Balls spent 25 minutes talking about what the Conservatives would do to the economy and 5 minutes on Labour's plans. #GE2015

tweets:, external To be clear, @edballsmp's vision of catastrophe based on day to day spending at 2002 levels and size of state at virtually same as in 2000

Norman Smith
BBC Assistant Political Editor

The scale of cuts Ed Balls was suggesting was bordering on apocalyptic. He said the army would be cut to its smallest size since the days of Oliver Cromwell. A third of people currently receiving adult social care would lose it, he warned. It really was an extraordinary picture. I suspect many people will say it's just scaremongering, but Labour believe that it could be reality.

It doesn't have to be that way, says Mr Balls. He is now listing things Labour would do that would save millions. "Sensible spending cuts," he calls them. He also says Labour would make fairer decisions, such as introducing a mansion tax, and would do more to improve growth and productivity, for example, by expanding free childcare and increasing the minimum wage.

tweets:, external There is a real risk the chancellor would be forced to break his promise to ring fence NHS spending, says Ed Balls

Never mind a possible VAT hike though, Ed Balls delivers what he probably hopes will be the killer blow. He says it's likely to be the NHS that really feels the brunt of the Tory spending plans. "I don't see what the alternative could be," he tells his audience. Cuts in NHS services and charging for treatment are both possibilities, he says.

tweets:, external Balls continues stats blitz: Only seven countries since 1945 have attempted cuts on this scale.

Ed Balls is painting an apocalyptic-sounding picture of what Britain under George Osborne's plans might look like. The police and army decimated, social care gutted. Is that really what he's planning to do, the shadow chancellor asks, or does he have another plan? Could that other plan involve another VAT increase.

tweets:, external @Conservatives reminding people that their spending plans post #ge2015 will take UK back to 2002/03 (labour govt) levels...

tweets:, external The two pillars of unionism during the Troubles have died within six months of each other.

Image source, other

tweets:, external Foreign office, Dept of Transport and DWP wd cease to exist under Osborne £70b cuts - @edballsmp

"More extreme than this Parliament. More extreme than post-war Britain." That's Ed Balls' assessment of future Conservative cuts.

Among those factors (see 10:17)? The £30bn announced so far does not cover the entire period of the next Parliament, Mr Ball says. The Tories have also committed to make a number of tax cuts during the next Parliament, but these are so far unfunded - all they have said is that they will be paid for by further public spending cuts.

Robert Peston
Economics editor

The Treasury was grotesquely unprepared in the summer of 2007 for the closure of financial markets and the financial and economic crisis that followed, writes BBC economics editor Robert Peston. So the worrying and damaging implication of today's report from the Commons Public Administration Committee is that the Treasury remains prone to risk myopia, he says in his blog.

"We are challenging them to come clean to the British people about what their plans really involve," says the shadow chancellor. There are five hidden factors in George Osborne's plans that mean the total cuts will be £70bn rather than £30bn.

Ed Balls says George Osborne made a genuine strategic choice in his Autumn Statement - a political choice - to seek to fill the gap in UK productivity growth with even deeper spending cuts. Since then, the Tories have tried "disingenuously" to insist that the plans are reasonable and responsible.