Labour squandered taxpayer's money in a pre-election spending "bender", the coalition claimed today.
Speaking at a press conference in Westminster this morning alongside Conservative Party chair Baroness Warsi, Liberal Democrat energy secretary Chris Huhne said Labour had to take responsibility for the budget deficit.
Attacking Labour's "legacy of waste", Huhne said Labour were no longer a "serious party" and had gone on an election spending "bender" in order to "buy the election".
"Labour once wanted to prove they could run the economy successfully. They said no more boom and bust," he said.
"But over the 13 years of Labour’s government something changed.
He added: "A decade of spend, spend, spend meant Labour hid their heads. And they are still hiding them."
"Unless Labour now face up to the challenge of fixing our nation’s finances, they won’t deserve power for another generation.”
While Tory and Lib Dem ministers have appeared side by side at press conferences before, the coordinated attack on Labour was the most political to date.
"It only took one party to create this mess," Huhne said. "Now our two parties – the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives – have come together in the national interest to clear it up."
Baroness Warsi also revealed that she has written to Labour ex-ministers asking them to pay back any severance pay they received after losing ministerial office.
And she called on the four Labour leadership contenders entitled to the £20,000 pay-off, arguing they were under no obligation to accept the money.
"Forfeiting this pay would be the first step towards accepting their responsibility, and the first sign they had come to terms with the mistakes of the past," she said.
Of the five Labour leadership contenders only Diane Abbott did not serve in the last government, and as such is not in line to receive any severance pay.
But the Labour party insist that they had a credible plan to half the deficit over four years, and that today's press conference is merely a summer stunt.
A party spokesman said: "This is nothing more than August posturing by Tory and Lib Dem ministers who should have better things to do."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd