Theresa May has ditched David Cameron's pledges not to raise income tax or national insurance in a Conservative manifesto she said laid out a vision for dealing with the "five great challenges" of the coming years.

The Prime Minister promised there would be no increase in VAT over the next parliament if she wins the General Election on June 8 and confirmed corporation tax will fall to 17%, but left Chancellor Philip Hammond flexibility to raise other taxes.

The manifesto includes plans to fund increased spending on social care by withdrawing the winter fuel payment from wealthier pensioners, and offers protection from the cost of social care for people with assets of £100,000 or less, a dramatic increase from the current £23,250 level in England.

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The package came under attack from the author of a review of social care, Sir Andrew Dilnot, who said he was "very disappointed" that a planned £72,000 cap on care costs was being scrapped - a move he said would leave elderly people "helpless" to control costs,

Unveiling the document in the Tory target seat of Halifax, West Yorkshire - close to the venue for Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto launch in Bradford two days before - Mrs May said Britain was facing the most challenging period in the past 60 years.

She restated her determination to get a good Brexit deal for Britain, but said her manifesto also addressed the challenges of building a strong economy, tackling social division and meeting the pressures of an ageing society and fast-changing technology.

She promised to govern for "mainstream Britain" and urged supporters of all parties to rally behind her drive to get the best possible deal from Brussels.

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"The next five years are the most challenging that Britain has faced in my lifetime. Brexit will define us: our place in the world, our economic security and our future prosperity," said Mrs May.

"So now more than ever, Britain needs a strong and stable government to get the best Brexit deal for our country and its people.

Mrs May said she was maintaining Mr Cameron's controversial target to reduce net immigration below 100,000 - something she failed to do in six years as Home Secretary.

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Mr Cameron's triple lock protection for the state pension - requiring it to rise by the largest of 2.5%, inflation or average earnings - will continue to 2020, but then be replaced by a double lock of earnings or inflation.

Mrs May rejected suggestions that policies such as an energy price cap, a commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on international aid and new rights for workers represented a move away from the Conservatism of Margaret Thatcher.

"Margaret Thatcher was a Conservative, I am a Conservative, this is a Conservative manifesto," said the Prime Minister.

"There is no Mayism. There is good solid Conservatism that puts the interests of the country and the interests of ordinary working people at the heart of everything we do in government."

Key features of the manifesto - entitled Forward, Together: Our Plan For A Stronger Britain And A Prosperous Future - included:

:: Commitment to stick to fiscal rules which require a balanced budget by 2025

:: Promise to "keep tax as low as possible and spend the proceeds responsibly", with a "firm intention" to reduce taxes on Britain's businesses and working families

:: Increase in personal income tax allowance to £12,500 and higher rate threshold to £50,000 by 2020

:: National Living Wage to reach 60% of median earnings by 2020

:: Boost of at least £8 billion to NHS spending in real terms over the next five years, with per capita increases in each individual year

:: A million new homes by the end of 2020 and 500,000 more by 2022.

:: Modern industrial strategy to spread economic opportunity to all parts of the country

:: Commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence and to increase spending by at least 0.5% above inflation every year

:: End to the ban on selective state schools to allow creation of new grammars

Mr Corbyn said the Tory plan to include the value of an elderly person's property in the means test for care in their own home was a "very, very bad idea" as costs can be "enormous".

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The Labour leader told Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2: "It's actually a tax on dementia, it's a tax on people that have got extreme needs and I think we as a society should accept the principle of the National Health Service - that we want to make sure we actually care for everybody.

He added: "If you start taking it (the cost) off the value of people's homes, it doesn't take very long - if you take an average house price across the whole country of somewhere around £280,000-£300,000 or so - it doesn't take very long for that to disappear.

"Somebody with dementia can actually live a very long time with dementia and need that support and that care."

Mr Corbyn also said bringing in a means test for the winter fuel allowance would be "very expensive".

The Herald:

The manifesto confirmed that Mrs May will take Britain out of the European single market and customs union and seek a new free trade agreement as part of the Brexit settlement.

It said Britain would be ready to pay a "fair" settlement to reflect liabilities to the EU, but insisted: "The days of Britain making vast annual contributions to the European Union will end."

It added: "We continue to believe that no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK. But we will enter the negotiations in a spirit of sincere co-operation and committed to getting the best deal for Britain."

Mrs May repeated her message to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon that "now is not the time" for a second independence referendum, adding: "It cannot take place until the Brexit process has played out and it should not take place unless there is public consent for it to happen."

The manifesto set out plans to increase the amount levied on firms employing migrant workers, and to require foreign workers and overseas students to pay more to cover the cost of NHS care.

It said a Conservative government would scrap universal free school lunches for infant pupils in England and instead offer free breakfasts across the primary years, while pumping an extra £4 billion a year into the schools system by 2022.

By contrast with the 2015 manifesto pledge to "work to eliminate" child poverty, Mrs May's agenda promised only to "reduce levels of child poverty".

The director of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Paul Johnson, said the Tory manifesto offered a sharply different approach to tax and spending to Labour's programme.

In the Conservative manifesto, "while there is not an absolute promise not to increase income tax or national insurance, what you have got is a pretty modest set of proposals which probably isn't going to require terribly much in the way of tax increases," Mr Johnson told the BBC.

"If you look at the Labour Party proposals, they have costed out their spending proposals at a pretty big £75 billion. To be clear, £75 billion is a very, very big number indeed, and they have promised £50 billion of tax rises.

"The big difference is that from the Labour Party we have a much bigger state, much more spending, much more tax. In the Conservative manifesto we have much more small-c conservatism. There isn't a lot more spending or a lot more tax."

The Conservative manifesto "pretty much matches" Labour's plans for spending on health, he said.

Mr Johnson said the Tories had left themselves "wriggle room" by keeping the target date of 2025 for eliminating the deficit.

Mr Hammond said in this year's Budget that this would be done "in the next Parliament", leading some observers to suggest the date would have to be brought forward to 2022 because of the snap election.

The IFS director said the target of getting immigration below 100,000 would clearly be "an additional cost on employers and the economy" because it implied losing a source of productive labour.

Mrs May said the Conservative party had "the intention of reducing taxes" on working families.

She added: "What we have been clear about is that we will keep the commitment that we are raising the personal allowance to £12,500 by 2020, raising the higher rate threshold to £50,000 by 2020 and that we are a low-tax party."

The Prime Minister told ITV's political editor Robert Peston that she would not set an "arbitrary" date for meeting her immigration target.

"In immigration, you have to be constantly working at it," she said. "There is no single thing that changes the figures in the way that you want. You have to look at all aspects of immigration.

"What we will be able to do when we leave the EU is, of course, bring in rules and controls for people coming from those remaining countries in the European Union into the UK, which we haven't been able to do as a member of the EU.

"I also want to ensure that people here in this country are able to get on regardless of where they come from, or which school they went to, that what we see here in the UK is that how far you go depends on your talents and your willingness to work hard.

"It's a good Conservative principle that we encourage people to aspire, that we ensure that there are opportunities there and then it's up to people to determine how hard they are willing to work."

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon defended the decision to soften the language on child poverty.

He told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "We set out here realistic goals for what we want to achieve over the five years of this parliament.

"I think it's very important we make promises and pledges that we can keep - we've looked at the wording of each of these individual pledges to be sure that we can keep them."