Election a "fight about who our country works for," says Miliband, as Labour and Tories step up campaigning.

The Prime Minister yesterday stepped up hostilities ahead of the May 7 poll by launching a fresh attack on Labour's plans to cut the deficit at a slower pace in the period up to 2018.

He defended his government's plan to cut a further £30billion of public spending as "moderate" and "reasonable".

Mr Miliband will hit back today, using a major speech to insist the Tory "experiment" of the past four years has damaged living standards, undermined public services and reduced opportunities for young people.

He will argue the Tories failed to eliminate the deficit by 2015, as George Osborne aimed, because wages fell as the economy struggled to recover from recession.

He will tell supporters: "It's the first time since the 1920s that working people will be worse off at the end of a parliament than they were at the beginning

"This Tory experiment has been tried. And the verdict is in: the Tory experiment has failed. "Theirs is not a record to run on. Theirs is a record to run from."

Mr Miliband will outline plans for activists to hold four million doostep conversations with voters in the run-up to polling, twice the level at the last election.

The leader will speak at scores of community meetings.

The focus on a grassroots campaign follows fears the Conservatives will spend three times as much as Labour on the campaign.

"We're fighting to be the kind of country that we all know we have it in ourselves to be. "And we're going to fight that fight in the right way," Mr Miliband will say.

"Today is day one of our general election campaign. This is nothing less than a once in a generation fight about who our country works for."

In a BBC interview yesterday, the Prime Minister stepped up his attacks on Labour, claiming Ed Miliband's plan to cut the deficit at a slower pace would saddle the country with an extra £13.5billion of debt interest payments and cause "real poverty".

He insisted his party's proposals to cut spending by an extra £30billion over the next three years were "not some ideological obsession".

"It is moderate, it is sensible, it is reasonable," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.

Renewing his attack on Labour, he added: "We have four months in this year to save Britain's economic recovery.

"It is all at risk from a group of politicians who have learned nothing from the last five years and who would borrow, spend and tax all over again putting us right back to square one."

Meanwhile Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will use a speech today to warn both the Conservatives and Labour pose a threat to continued economic recovery.

The Liberal Democrat will attack Labour's past record on the economy and claim his Conservative coalition partners are "trying to sell you an ideological approach to cuts to public services packaged up as continuity".

He will add: "The biggest threat to our economy comes from Labour and the Conservatives, both of whom are reverting to type as the election approaches."

Earlier, Labour launched a fierce attack on the Conservatives over the NHS.

In a "start of the race" note to activists, Labour's election strategy chief Douglas Alexander called for a campaign to "save" the health service south of the Border.

A Labour document published yesterday warned of longer waiting times, reduced spending and more privatisation across the NHS in England.

In his message to supporters, Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP Mr Alexander said: "We need your help to save it.

"Today we are launching a four-month campaign to make clear that our health service as you know it won't survive another five years of David Cameron."

During the referendum campaign, the pro-UK parties rejected SNP claims the Scottish NHS would be damaged by health policies down south.

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