'We'll spend 4G billions on building affordable homes and stamp duty holiday' vows Labour's Balls,,,

Ed Balls today vowed to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on building affordable homes and a stamp duty holiday if Labour is elected – after insisting the party has nothing to apologise for on the economy.

The Shadow Chancellor told his party’s annual conference in Manchester that he would use the proceeds of the forthcoming sale of the 4G mobile phone spectrum to fund the initiatives.

The defiant announcement is a deliberate contrast to the approach of Gordon Brown, who used all the £22.5billion raised from the sale of the 3G spectrum to pay down the deficit, even in the boom year of 2000.

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Getting ready for the main event: Ed Balls has make-up applied and has a quick drink before facing the media in Manchester ahead of his keynote speech at the Labour Party annual conference today

On air: Mr Balls has made it clear that Labour has nothing to apologise for regarding its public spending, vowing to spend more on affordable housing

Although Britain is now battling to avoid a full-scale debt crisis, Mr Balls would use the £3billion expected to be raised from the latest sale to build 100,000 affordable homes and fund a two-year stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers of properties worth up to £250,000.

The Shadow Chancellor, asked yesterday whether he would apologise for Labour’s ‘profligacy’ when in power, declared: ‘No.’

Mr Balls said Labour had never pretended to be a ‘balanced budget party’, telling the Huffington Post website: ‘We were a borrow-to-invest and balance the current budget party.

‘David Cameron and George Osborne would like nothing better than for me to say that the reason there was a global financial crisis, the reason that our deficit went up, is because of Labour public spending. But it’s rubbish.’

Mr Balls insisted Britain’s structural deficit was only ‘marginally higher’ than other countries before the financial crisis hit, a claim derided by the Conservatives, who accuse Labour of ‘failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining’.

Labour leader Ed Miliband refused to guarantee that Mr Balls would be his Chancellor if Labour wins the election, though he appears powerless to move him.

Some Labour MPs hope for a comeback by former chancellor Alistair Darling, or even Mr Miliband’s vanquished brother David, to take Mr Balls’s place towards the next election.

Amid persistent reports of tensions between him and Mr Balls, when the leader was asked if Mr Balls would definitely be chancellor if there was a Labour government, he replied: ‘I think I’ll make my cabinet when it comes to . . . measuring the curtains is not my style.’

Mr Balls, however, made it clear that he did not expect to be shifted to another shadow cabinet post. He said he would do everything he could to ‘make it work’ if David Miliband decided he wanted to come back to the political  front line.

But asked if he would relinquish the shadow chancellorship, he replied: ‘There’s a limit even to my generosity.’

In his conference speech today, Mr Balls will say building 100,000 more affordable homes would help kick-start the economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

‘We’re just one of two G20 countries in recession, the longest double-dip recession since the Second World War. And because we are in recession, the deficit is now not going down, it’s going up – by 22 per cent so far this year,’ he will say.

‘There is nothing credible about a plan that leads to a double-dip recession, thousands of businesses bust, a million young people out of work, billions wasted on a soaring benefits bill, and borrowing going up not down.

'Rising borrowing, not to invest in the jobs of the future, but to pay for the mounting costs of this government’s economic failure.’

A Treasury source said the Government had not made any decision on what to do with the proceeds of the 4G sale.  ‘Balls is all over the place – a feeble attempt to regain lost economic credibility with vague promises of a spending review after the election, then an unfunded stamp-duty cut, and now more spending,’ the source added. ‘It is total incoherence.’