The shadow chancellor, Mr Michael Portillo, yesterday admitted the last Tory government had mistakenly failed to control public spending.
He said: "We made two errors during the last government which this government is determined to repeat. One was that briefly we did not control public spending and it is very important that public spending should be controlled.
"The second is that we entered the exchange rate mechanism which meant that we started setting interest rates, not according to the British economic conditions, but what was happening in Germany."
"You are right to say that these policies brought us difficulties in the past. We have learned and we are now determined not to repeat those policies."
Speaking on ITV's Dimbleby, he acknowledged that taxes went up under the Tories because of "policy errors".
Mr Portillo, when asked if he was a "never man" on the euro, revealed with a smile: "I am with William Hague. It means that if you want Britain to have its own currency, you should be voting Conservative."