The Conservatives and Labor have gone into election battle over the economy

The Conservatives and Labor have gone into election battle over the economy on the first weekend of election campaigning. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said he wants to cut National Insurance, while his opposite number Rachel Reeves has promised not to "play fast and loose" with public finances. The IFS think tank has warned that the "parlous" state of the UK's finances will "hang over the campaign like a dark cloud". Elsewhere, Sir Keir Starmer has been defending his workers' rights offer, after a trade union leader accused him of watering it down.

The Labor leader told the BBC that his New Deal for Working People would be "the biggest leveling up of working people's rights for a generation". But Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, said the deal "had more holes in it than Swiss cheese”. The day began with both the chancellor and shadow chancellor setting out their economic pitches to the papers. In his first interview since Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4 July, Mr Hunt told the Telegraph he would build on previous cuts to National Insurance saying: "We made a start, and we will go further."

He suggested he would seek to lower the taxes paid by people earning between £100,000 and £125,000 a year, who pay a greater proportion of their income in tax than even higher earners. The chancellor also described inheritance tax as "pernicious" and "profoundly anti-Conservative" arguing that it deterred people from saving. Asked if cutting inheritance tax would be a priority, he said: "I hope it's something that over time a Conservative government would be able to look at."

Speaking to another traditionally-Conservative supporting paper, Ms Reeves told the Daily Mail she would deliver "tough spending rules so we can grow our economy and keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible." "I will never play fast and loose with your money... I believe in sound money and public spending that is kept under control." Speaking later at a supermarket, she said she "wants taxes on working people to be lower" but would not make "promises about taxes I can't keep".

It came as the Institute of Fiscal Studies warned that unless the economy sees a dramatic boost, the next government would have to either cut spending, raise taxes or increase borrowing. Earlier this year the IFS accused the major parties of a "conspiracy of silence" by not "acknowledging the scale of the choices and trade-offs that will face us after the election".