ED Miliband has accused George Osborne of a "secret" plan to cut the NHS and raise VAT if the Conservatives win May's General Election.

The Labour leader said the moves, both likely to be publicly unpopular, were what the Chancellor was "not saying".

In a reference to his infamous failure to mention the deficit in his conference speech, Mr Miliband also accused Mr Osborne of forgetting the NHS in the Budget.

And he told MPs the Chancellor had produced proposals "that people won't believe".

The confident attack eased nerves among some Labour MPs over their leader's performances.

A recent opinion poll suggested that Mr Miliband was less popular with the public than even the beleaguered Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

However, the Labour leader drew cheers form his own side as he told MPs: "Never has the gap between the Chancellor's rhetoric and the reality of people's lives been greater than it was today.

"This is a Budget people won't believe from a Government that is not on their side - because of their record, because of their instinct, because of their plans for the future."

He added: "And because of a Budget, most extraordinarily, that had no mention of investment in our National Health Service and our vital public services."

He also attacked Mr Osborne's claims of an economic recovery across the whole of the UK, saying that "it's certainly not a truly national recovery when there are more zero hours contracts than the population of Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff combined".

VAT rose to 20 per cent in 2010, in one of the most controversial decisions after the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition came to power.

In the run up to that year's General Election the Conservatives had denied plans to increase the levy.

Mr Miliband said: "What's the lesson? Deny it before an election and then hike up VAT afterwards."

He also accused the Tories of a "secret plan" to cut the NHS, claiming they could not deliver their planned "colossal cuts" to defence, policing and local government.

Overall he said Mr Osborne had put up 24 taxes, cost ordinary families more than £1,000, the equivalent to 8p on the basic rate of tax, and was now planning "massive" spending cuts.

He said: "But they won't be able to deliver those cuts so they will end up cutting the National Health Service.

"That is the secret plan that they are not saying today."

SNP deputy leader and Treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie said the Chancellor had "failed to meet all of the targets he set himself".

He added: "There was no long term economic plan, merely a long term austerity plan.

"A political Budget as ever from an all too political Chancellor and as I'm sure many of us have said in the past, while the Tory backbenchers may have waved their order papers today they will pay the price at the ballot box on the 7th May."

Former Tory Treasury minister Mark Hoban hit back, saying his party had inherited a country in which the previous Labour government had spent too much.

Tory MP Damian Collins, for Folkestone and Hythe, said: "No one will believe members of the party opposite, the party which when in government ran up deficits while the economy was still growing, ran up deficits in the good years, has now suddenly become the hawkish guardian of the balanced budget."