Conservatives would raise VAT "within weeks" if they win power in this year's election, a senior Labour minister has warned.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls - Gordon Brown's closest Cabinet ally - came close to ruling out a VAT hike if Labour remained in office, but said shadow chancellor George Osborne would be unable to fund his tax-cutting promises without it.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives launched a fresh personal attack on the Prime Minister, saying the British people under Mr Brown's leadership were like "lions led by donkeys".
The comment came from shadow foreign secretary William Hague in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in which he accused the PM of "suppressing" Britain's potential and leaving economic "poison pills" for his successors to deal with.
And Sir John Major became the second former PM to step into the election fray, following Tony Blair's speech last week, with a vitriolic broadside in which he accused Mr Brown of deceptions neither "acceptable nor worthy of the office of prime minister".
It was also reported that Conservatives would pledge to block British involvement in the creation of an EU public prosecutor who could charge UK citizens without the approval of the British authorities.
David Cameron promised to give all cancer patients in England access to drugs rejected as not cost-effective by the health watchdog Nice, using £200 million saved from NHS staffing costs annually by Mr Osborne's decision to reverse Labour's 1% rise in National Insurance.
But Mr Balls said the £6 billion NI pledge, coupled with commitments to raise inheritance tax thresholds and recognise marriage in the tax system, would force Tories to increase VAT - which Labour has avoided because it hits pensioners and the poor hardest.
"There is no way he will do all that and make this add up unless he does what Tory governments always do and raise VAT," Mr Balls told The Observer. "They will do it within weeks. We don't need to because we have set out our deficit reduction plan for four years which does not involve raising VAT."
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Mr Cameron denied that he was planning to raise the purchase tax, saying: "We've set out our plans, and our plans involve cutting wasteful spending and stopping the National Insurance rise. Our plans don't involve an increase in VAT."
