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PM Says Britain Needs To Take Cuts 'Medicine'

The Conservative leader has refused to say where welfare cuts will fall but insisted that British families still needed to take "the medicine" to help put the country back on track.

In a round of interviews setting out a pledge to create two million extra jobs over the course of the next parliament, David Cameron admitted there were more cuts to be made but would not say where they would fall.

The Conservatives have said they will find £12bn of welfare cuts over the next parliament if they are returned to power on 7 May but have indicated they will not tell voters of the details before the vote.

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Tackled on where the cuts would fall on Sky News Mr Cameron said: "The medicine is that we need to - for two more years - do what we have done for the last five, which is find £1 out of every £100 the Government spends and save it.

"So the choice at this election, if you simplify it, really is: do you want to find that £1 saving out of every £100, which families and businesses up and down the country have had to do or do you want to scrap that plan and put up taxes and borrow more."

Mr Cameron said that they had managed to find £20bn of welfare savings in the last five years.

Answering claims he would go down as the "biggest Scrooge prime minister", Mr Cameron said he didn't come into office to make cuts but when he came to power Britain had a budget deficit forecast to be bigger than that of Greece and he had to do the job.

He also dismissed criticism over using his outgoing address at Number 10, at which he officially announces the General Election, to attack his opponent Ed Miliband.

He was the first prime minister to use the platform to speak against the opposition leader but when asked if it was "not cricket", Mr Cameron told Sky's Eamonn Holmes: "In cricket there are two opposing teams".

And after reports of meetings between Tory MPs and UKIP members he denied he had been in "secret talks" over a coalition and intended to spend the next 37 days working for a majority.

He also said that his wife, Samantha, had not been behind his decision to announce he would only serve two terms as Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron believes the Tories can match the job creation of the past five years, during which the Coalition created an average of 1,000 new jobs every day. Although he got his figures mixed up during the interview on Sky News and claimed it had been 10,000 a day.

As the second day of campaigning gets under way, the Prime Minister said: "We are the jobs party - and over the next month, we will be fighting for every man and woman who wants to work and earn a wage."

The pledge comes exactly a year after Chancellor George Osborne set a goal of full employment for Britain.

Mr Cameron argues an additional two million jobs is a feasible target thanks to government assistance for business, competitive tax rates, a parliament-long campaign against red tape, plus investment in infrastructure.

He said Labour's plan to reverse corporation tax cuts - as a way of paying for a reduction in rates for small businesses - was a "crazy thing to do when the economy is growing".

The Prime Minister's first outing of the election campaign proper was to address a rally of supporters at a school in Chippenham - a marginal constituency they need to take if they are to stand any chance of winning a majority.

Speaking at the event, Mr Cameron admitted he is not the "perfect" Prime Minister - but insisted he has a record to be "proud" of.

It came figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that the UK economy grew faster than had been expected - 2.8% in 2014, which was 0.2% higher than earlier estimates.

Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats sought to distinguish themselves from the Conservatives, and other parties, by focusing on mental health with a pledge of extra funding.

He accused the Tories of trying to "pull the wool over people's eyes" on NHS funding by refusing to set out clearly for voters how it would pay for its pledges on the health service.

The Lib Dems were the first party to commit to meeting the extra £8bn the NHS chief Simon Stevens said was needed for the health service to survive by 2020.

Mr Clegg also criticised Mr Cameron's refusal to say where welfare cuts will fall and said: "The Conservatives are trying to treat people like fools. They say they are going to take £12 billion away from the poorest families in the country but they won't spell out how or where. They are promising everybody lashings of tax cuts but won't tell people how they are going to pay for it."

On the first day of Labour's campaign, Mr Miliband tried to win over business with the launch of the party's first "mini manifesto".

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