Gordon Brown has kicked Labour's election campaign up a gear with a political Budget designed to woo floating voters.

The chancellor effectively urged the public to vote Labour to lock in long term investment in the public services for four more years.

With carefully designed stamp duty, savings and tax credit boosts to appeal to pensioners, first-time buyers and working families, the government is hoping to head off the Conservatives' own plans for £4bn worth of tax cuts.

The shadow chancellor has committed to slashing council tax for the elderly in a bid to win over the grey vote, while holding back on how he would distribute the remainder of the funds.

With the Tories also expected to offer targeted help to the low-paid by raising the threshold at which income tax is paid, the chancellor also tweaked his tax credit policy to provide more cash to poorer families.

Both pension credit and child tax credit will be uprated in line with earnings, rising by 13 per cent by 2008.

Brown believes that this is a more effective way of using money as means-testing ensures it does not also go to higher-earners.

He pointedly explained that lower-income households would get more help this way than via Oliver Letwin's expected tax cut.

And a council tax rebate for pensioners next year of £200 was "worth more to more pensioners than all other proposed schemes" he pointedly said.

Homes

By doubling the threshold at which stamp duty is paid on homes from £60,000 to £120,000, he also gave some assistance to first-time buyers struggling to get a foot on the property ladder.

Along with Brown's child trust funds, which will be supplemented in primary and secondary years, Labour wants to make home ownership more widely available in a third term as a means of extending opportunity and countering social exclusion.

The chancellor announced that the stamp duty funds will be matched by more money for shared-equity schemes, creating 100,000 new homeowners.

He also countered Conservative promises to reduce red tape on business and the size of government.

"Ahead of schedule", Brown announced that the first £2bn efficiency savings from the Gershon review had been achieved, while his Hampton review of quangos was enhanced, intended to cut regulation and increase support for small businesses.

The party is also keen to draw a distinction between its record of economic competence and that of the last Conservative government.

Brown again boasted of the longest period of sustained growth in Britain in 300 years under his stewardship, contrasting the past eight years with the Tories' record of "boom and bust", as he sought to put the economy - and himself - at the heart of the Labour campaign.

"To repeat the pattern of past governments at this stage of the parliament would risk a return to the high inflation, high interest rates, stop go and short-termism of the past and put long term stability at risk," he said.