Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg yesterday urged his party to back him over radical new plans to fund tax cuts by slashing public spending.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg yesterday urged his party to back him over radical new plans to fund tax cuts by slashing public spending.

Facing a potential revolt today at his first party conference as leader, Mr Clegg said the Liberal Democrats were already committed to a "tax switch" from the wealthy and taxing polluting activities to deliver a 4p cut in income tax.

The party was now seeking to identify a further £20bn of government expenditure which could be "spent better elsewhere" and handed back in further tax breaks to "those who really need it", he said.

Many grass-roots activists attending the conference are uncomfortable with what is seen as a lurch to the right but in a question-and-answer session he denied he was "Cameron-lite" - as critics have dubbed him.

Mr Clegg urged the party's conference to go "one step further" over tax policy. He claimed Labour was wasting billions of pounds.

The LibDems could identify 3% of the £600bn bill and re-allocate some to priorities such as mental health and housing, giving the rest to "those who need it most".

Mr Clegg said he wanted to help those who had been "really struggling" and now faced escalating fuel and food bills. "It's so obvious to me that we should be on the side of those people - not simply on the side of the system in Whitehall," he said. Mr Clegg said his party had already taken some of the "difficult decisions" to scrap ID cards and a Whitehall department, as well as the government's road building programme.

The LibDems would also stop "above-average income" families from being able to claim tax credits, replacing the child trust fund with a scheme to give children help at a younger age.