Last night I attended a hustings event organised by the Chamber of Commerce alongside my Labour and Conservative counterparts.

What came across loud and clear was both the pressure small to medium sized enterprises currently find themselves under and the concern that the political parties had the right answers so far as business and the economy were concerned.

On the day when the Institute for Fiscal Studies criticised the 3 main parties for having large holes in their plans to cut the budget deficit etc, I said that political parties need to be honest with the electorate. It is no use any of the main parties trying to pretend in this crisis that we have exclusive solutions to the problem.

That’s why the Lib Dems would like the three main parties to get together after the election in a council for fiscal stability. We need a coherent, sustainable cross party response to this massive problem. Lets bring the Chancellor together with the shadow chancellors and the Governor of the Bank of England and others and iron out a strategy that can take the economy forward.

Incidently  the IFS briefing clearly stated that the Liberal Democrats have gone further than any party in identifying the savings that will be needed to tackle the structural deficit. The Conservatives on the other hand have pledged to make the biggest cuts to spending since the Second World War without coming clean about where the axe will fall. 

The IFS also shows both Labour and the Conservatives are hiding behind vague efficiency savings to avoid coming clean about their proposals.

We welcome the IFS’s overall assessment that the Liberal Democrat plans to raise the personal allowance to £10,000 is progressive, adds up and gives people an incentive to work.

This is in stark contrast to the assessment of Conservative tax plans, which the IFS have shown to be both regressive by rewarding the richest, as well as self contradictory. As the IFS have shown, the Conservatives would have to reverse half of their proposed £6bn National Insurance tax cut to meet their own targets on tax.