For the first and only time in this General Election campaign the main party leaders have gone head-to-head in a live televised debate.
After giving opening statements they face four questions from a studio audience of around 200 people in Salford over the course of the two-hour event.
Each is being allowed to give an uninterrupted one-minute answer followed by 18 minutes of debate on each question, selected by an experienced editorial panel and which the leaders have not seen in advance.
The seven contenders in the TV debate are – in podium order from left to right – the Green Party’s Natalie Bennett, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, Ukip’s Nigel Farage, Labour leader Ed Miliband, Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
Here are some of the key quotes from their responses.
The leaders were first asked how they believed they would be able to keep their promises of eliminating the deficit without raising certain taxes or making vast cuts to vital public services.
Mr Clegg said: “I think it is all about balance, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t think you should be faced with the stark choice of either cutting too much … or borrowing too much.
“I think that is a dismal choice, borrowing too much or cutting too much. You need to reduce spending but you also need to make those with the broadest shoulders, the wealthiest, pay a bit more.
“So the Liberal Democrat plan is a very simple one. We will cut less than the Conservatives and we will borrow less than Labour.”
Mr Cameron said: “We have got a plan which is working … I think what is absolutely crucial here is recognising that what our plan involves is balance.
“We are going to go on investing in the NHS every year as we have done under this government … we are going to find savings of £1 out of every £100 that the government spends. We need to do that for two more years.
“The alternative to that plan is actually putting up taxes and I don’t want to do that. I think if we go back to the tax, the waste, the spending, all the things that got us into a mess in the first place, we wouldn’t help working people, we would hurt working people.”
Ms Wood said: “We see no reason to put arbitrary deadlines on cutting the deficit. The austerity experiment has failed.
“So much pain for so little gain. The banks have had a bailout, it’s time now for the people to have a bailout and it’s time for us to invest in public services and job creation.”
Mr Farage said the question was right, asking: “How can anyone believe these promises?
“This coalition was put together to reduce the annual deficit to zero. That’s why these two guys got together.
“We need to make cuts and there are places we can start. We could easily cut £10 billion a year from the foreign aid budget. We could save another £10 billion a year by not paying over money to Brussels every single day. We could end vanity projects like HS2, that will only benefit a tiny number of people … we could revisit the Barnett Formula.”
Mr Miliband said: “We will cut the deficit every year and we will balance the books. But we will do it in a fairer and a better way than has been tried for the last five years.
“What we will do is first of all we will have fair taxes, so we will reverse the tax cut that he gave to millionaires … secondly we will have common sense spending reductions.
“So outside key areas like education and health, spending will fall.
“Thirdly we will do something else because your living standards have fallen over the last five years and that hasn’t just been bad for working people, it has also meant that government hasn’t had the tax revenue coming in.”
Ms Bennett said her party was “offering the reversal of austerity, investingin your future”.
“We need to raise taxes on those who are not currently paying their share,” she said.
“Multinational companies in particular and rich individuals if they paid their share in the world’s sixth richest country, we can afford to have a decent society and afford to have decent public services.”
Ms Sturgeon said the UK “should have modest spending increases over the next parliament” not cuts.
“It will take slightly longer to eliminate the deficit but the deficit would continue to fall every year.
“But crucially the alternative plan would mean we had resources to invest in infrastructure and skills and innovation.”
That “must be better than a blind commitment to austerity that doesn’t take an account of the damage being done” she said.
Party have said they are not going to ask therichest in society to make a single extra penny of contribution to balancing thebooks through the tax system”.
“Just imagine, David Cameron, the chaos in people’s lives” if NHS and education spending was cut.
Mr Cameron said the wealthy would be the target of a £5 billion crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion.
He in turn put the spotlight on Mr Miliband, who he said “still thinks the last Labour government didn’t tax too much, borrow too much and spend too much”.
“And if you don’t understand the mistakes of the past, you can’t provide the leadership of the future.”
The Labour leader told the Prime Minister: “You haven’t acted on the tax havens, you haven’t acted on the hedge funds.
“You have to ask yourself at home: why won’t David Cameron act on those hedge funds? They fund his party.”
Mr Cameron said Labour wanted “to put up taxes and cut your pay”.
“Going into your monthly payslip and taking your money out because he thinks he can spend that money better than you.”
Ms Sturgeon said it was “really ironic hearing Nick Clegg and David Cameron arguing when they have been hand in glove imposing austerity on these people for the last five years”.
As debate became increasingly fraught, Mr Farage shouted “What’s going onhere? Get real, please” and accused all his rivals of either ignoring the”massive problem” of the deficit or failing to deal with it in government.
In debate on the NHS, Mr Farage clashed with Ms Wood over the issue of healthtourism.
The Ukip leader said: “Here’s a fact, and I am sure the other people here will be mortified that I dare to talk about it. There are 7,000 diagnoses in this country every year for people who are HIV positive. It’s not a good place for any of them to be, I know.
“Sixty per cent of them are not British nationals. They can come into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retro-viral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient.
“I know there are some horrible things happening in many parts of the world, but what we need to do is put the NHS there for British people and families, who in many cases have paid into the system for decades.”
Ms Wood responded: “This kind of scaremongering is dangerous, it divides communities and it creates stigma to people who are ill, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Mr Farage replied: “Well, it’s true. I’m sorry, we’ve got to put our own people first.”