This is from my colleague James Ball.

The session with Edward Troup has been postponed.

That means that’s all from the public accounts committee for today.

I will post a summary soon.

My colleague Juliette Garside has more on the protester who was thrown out of the hearing.

Stephen Hammond, a Conservartive, says he wants to disassociate himself from what Margaret Hodge said about Fairhead.

But he does agree with her comments in relation to Meares. He says he found Meares an “unreliable witness”.

Hodge says she was expressing a personal view.

She says she thought about this all weekend. She has met Fairhead once, and liked her. But she came to the conclusion she should go.

The HSBC part of the hearing is now over. The committee is still due to take evidence from Edward Troup, tax assurance commissioner at HMRC.

I will post a summary soon.

Q: Have you sacked any compliance officers in Switzerland who are suing you for unfair dismissal?

Gulliver says he does not know about that. He will write to the committee.

A protester starts shouting. He is taken out of the room.

Gulliver says in 2012 HSBC changed the rules to stop people taking huge amounts of cash out of an account.

He says people taking out large amounts of cash are not automatically evading tax. But it does indicate a risk.

Q: Why else would you want to do that?

Gulliver says if you were a Middle Eastern client, with $5bn in the bank, you might want to take out $5m in cash. That would be quite normal.

In some of these countries there is not much tax to pay anyway.

Fairhead says it was not until 2009 that HSBC learnt how serious the leak of customer information was.

It still has not seen all the data, she says.

It then initiated a project to ascertain that the bank was not engaged in tax evasion.

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, has been tweeting about the HSBC evidence.

Q: You only closed your private account in Panama in 2009.

Gulliver confirms that. He repeats the point about being domiciled in Hong Kong.

Gulliver says he is not blaming his predecessor.

Q: Are you blaming him for this?

No, says Gulliver.

There was an out of date structure in place at the time. That was the problem.

Q: What is the audit committee for?

It is there to oversee the management and hold the executive to account, says Fairhead.

The initial analysis of Switzerland said there was no evidence of wrong-doing there.

The audit committee had to rely on the experts it used, she says.

Q: You paid £53m to external auditors. Have you asked for the money back?

No, says Gulliver.

He says the internal audits have been made much tougher.

Gulliver says he has lost £1.7m in bonus payments because of what went wrong.

But it would not be right for him to lose money because of what happened before he even took charge.

Dame Anne McGuire goes next.

Q: Are you saying you, as an audit committee, never got a breakdown of the types of accounts the Swiss branch was offering?

Fairhead says she cannot recall the hold mail account issue being brought to the committee.

Q: Gulliver said earlier that hold mail accounts were used to evade or avoid tax. Why did the audit committee not look at this?

Fairhead says this issue was not brought to the committee.

McGuire says this is a creative interpretation of the words “risk” and “audit”.

Margaret Hodge says in the public sector people accept responsibility when something goes wrong. She tells the three witnesses they have failed to do this themselves.

Q: Did you ever raise the issue of hold mail accounts?

Fairhead says it came up when they were looking at reforming the private bank.

Q: [To Fairhead] You said there were system failings. Given that you were in charge of the systems, don’t you have to go.

No, says Fairhead.

Q: Someone has to take responsibility?

Fairhead says she could only deal with the information she had.

She has been unyielding, she says.

Margaret Hodge says MPs on the committee do a similar job. They get evidence put to them. They have to decide whether or not to question it. She says she has never seen a non-exec paid £500,000 for the number of days Fairhead does. She suggests Fairhead should resign.

Fairhead says, when she was head of the risk committee, she was paid hte normal non-exec fee.

For her US role she is paid £334,000. That is in line with the other directors on the US board.

Q: For how many days a week.

Fairhead says she works a week and a half on HSBC. She works 75 to 100 days a week. She corrects herself. 75 to 100 days a year. That is what the board of HSBC thinks is appropriate.

Q: So you are doing 100 days a year for HSBC.

Yes, if you include weekends.

Q: And what about the BBC.

Fairhead says it is 150 to 180 days.

Q: Did you ask about the hold mail accounts?

Fairhead says the Swiss branch only accounted for 2% of business.

Q: You were responsible for risk and audit. But these accounts were problematic.

Margaret Hodge says Gulliver said just now that the systems were not in place. But you are saying you could rely on the systems to ensure that proper checks were carried out.

Fairhead says at the time they thought proper supervisory procedures were in place. With hindsight, it is clear that there were problems.

Fairhead says they relied on two things: management oversight, and the culture of HSBC, which was considered to be very sound.

But, as HSBC acquired new businesses, it became clear the structures were wrong.

Hodge says that, if the structures were fit for purpose, there would not have been tax evasion worth £135m. She says it is “nonsense” for Fairhead to suggest the procedures were sound.

Q: Did you ask if tax evasion and avoidance contributed to the profitability of the Swiss branch?

Fairhead says she would expect everything to be done to comply with company policy.

Q: Did you ask the question?

Yes, in different ways.

She says they were “unyeilding”. We were on top of it.

Q: You were so on top of it you did not discover it until the information was leaked.

Fairhead says it is reasonable to ask non-executive directors to rely on the procedures in place.

Margaret Hodge goes next. She asks Rona Fairhead what she knew.

Rona Fairhead says the people who are most culpable are those who evade tax.

She also holds the frontline staff responsible. She also holds the management in Switzerland accountable.

Margaret Hodge says Fairhead is paid £10,000 a day. She does not know what she does for that.

Fairhead says that figure is not true.

There was management in place to ensure policies were complied with, she says.

Stephen Phillips, a Conservative, goes next.

He says HSBC is asking them to believe that no one in London knew what was happening in Switzerland. He says he finds that hard to believe. It was blind eye knowledge, he says. HSBC was turning a blind eye.

Gulliver says the bank was “a loose federation” at the time.

Q: Doesn’t it beggar belief that nobody outside Switzerland knew what was going on there? These high net worth individuals had been brought in because their firms banked with other parts of HSBC.

Gulliver says the private bank is now completely integrated into HSBC.

Margaret Hodge says she cannot believe that there was no synergy before 2010 between banking for high net worth individuals and corporate banking.

Meares says, if an individual did not say they had an account with HSBC in Switzerland, the bankers in London would not know.

Q: But isn’t it standard banking practice, if you have corporate clients, to try to get them to bank with you privately too.

Gulliver says he does not know the extent to which that happened.

Meares says betwen 2006 and 2011, if a corporate UK customer said they wanted a Swiss account, he would know.

Gulliver says the HSBC bank was regulated by top-notch regulators.

That meant there was a limit to what further checks HCBC could make when it bought the Swiss operation.

HSBC bought this bank, and others, because it did not want to be over-exposed to Asia, he says.

Dame Anne McGuire is asking question now.

Q: Why do you think customers might want a “hold mail” account (an account where the bank does not write to the customer)?

Meares says people wanted these accounts for reasons of accountability. And some of them had different accounts.

Q: When did HSBC stop these accounts?

Gulliver said HSBC carried out a review of these accounts. The number of hold mail accounts was cut from 14,000 to 12.

Q: Why did it take you so long to get rid of these accounts?

Gulliver says he started to change HSBC when he became chief executive.

The trigger was the money laundering problems in Mexico.

That made him conclude the loose federal structure of the bank was not appropriate.

Q: Do you think hold mail accounts were use to avoid or evade tax?

Yes, says Gulliver. That is why the bank stopped them.

Today’s session is already turning pretty brutal.

David Burrowes, a Conservative, is asking questions now.

Q: Did you have any hint that tax evasion was going on?

Meares says he was not.

Margaret Hodge is asking questions. She addresses Meares.

Meares says Switzerland was about 30% of the private banking business.

He was responsible for supervising the Swiss operation. But he was not in day to day charge.

He says there were “control failings” at the Swiss operation.

Q: Are you the fall guy? Do you accept full responsibility?

Meares says he accepts responsibility for the control failings that may have happened when he was in charge.

Q: Personal responsibility?

Meares says he takes responsibility.

Q: Do you take direct responsibility? Yes or no?

Meares says he is taking more than fairly direct responsibility. He takes responsibility.

Q: Do you take direct responsibility? Answer yes or no.

Meares says he takes fairly direct responsibility for what happened with global private banking during his responsibility.

It has to be placed in context.

He does not take responsibility for the individual actions in Switzerland of which he was not aware.

Q: Did these arrangements cause reputational damage to the bank?

Gulliver says his failure to persuade people there was an innocent reason for this has damaged the reputation of the bank.

Q: Are you appropriate to remain as chief executive?

Gulliver says he thinks he is, because his tax affairs are in order.

He has tightened HSBC and made it a simpler business.

Hodge says Gulliver had his salary paid through a shell company based in Panama.

She says he is expecting the committee to believe this was just for reasons of privacy. But it is hard to believe that, she says.

Stuart Gulliver, the HSBC chief executive, Chris Meares, the former chief executive of HSBC global private banking and Rona Fairhead, an HSBC director (and the BBC Trust chair), are giving evidence now.

Margaret Hodge, the public accounts committee chair, is speaking now.

She gets Gulliver to confirm that he has a British passport, pays tax in the UK and votes in the UK.

David Cameron denied calling grammar schools an “albatross” a few minutes ago. (See 2.43pm.)

But he did use that phrase in relation to grammar schools in 2007. This is what he said.

Far from being some winning slogan, a pledge to build more grammar schools would be an electoral albatross.

Q: Why are you going to spend money creating new schools, where some places won’t be filled, when overall schools face a real-terms cut?

Cameron says the capital budget for schools is going up.

Generally, there have been three applicants for every free school place, he says.

Q: How many of the new free schools will be technical schools?

Cameron says it is up to the schools to decide.

He says people mistakenly think academic and vocational education are totally different. But, even in vocational education, pupils need to learn basic English and maths skills.

Cameron is summing up now.

My motto in life is “family first”.

I apply it to my own life and to my politics.

At their best, families are resilient – tight-knit units which can weather anything.

And if you doubt it, just think of what your family has gone through over the years and how you’ve come through it together.

But at the same time families are vulnerable – vulnerable to shocks, vulnerable to financial pressure.

Job losses or money worries can tear them apart.

I believe financial security for families is one of Government’s foremost duties.

It’s what I’m in politics to deliver – a better life for you and your children.

Every time I champion an economic success, it’s because it’s been a success for families.

When I celebrate the reopening of a brick factory, it’s not because I love bricks…

…it’s because I love to see all those staff doing their jobs with pride, knowing they’re going home to their families with a wage.

Every time I celebrate the opening of a Free School it’s not because I love cutting ribbons or taking selfies with the students…

…it’s because I’m so glad, so relieved that more parents can, like me, share the peace of mind you feel when your child is getting a great education.

Cameron turns to savings, and says that four weeks from today over-55s will have access to their pension pots.

On schools, Cameron says that he and his wife are glad their daughter has just got a place at a good state secondary school in London.

He turns to the free schools announcement released overnight by Number 10 (and trailed in the Guardian on Saturday.)

Cameron turns to housing.

One problem was the mortgages were too high. But interest rates have been kept down.

Another problem was that people could not afford a deposit. Help to Buy has addressed that.

And a third problem was lack of supply. The government has released more land for building, changed planning rules, and drawn up plans for two new garden cities.

Cameron turns to childcare. Most families spend a quarter of their income on this, he says.

This is not just an issue for women or parents. It’s a national issue.

So we’ve acted…

… increasing the number of free childcare hours for 3 and 4 year olds …

… introducing 15 free hours for the 40 per cent most disadvantaged 2 year olds …

… and in the next parliament perhaps the most transformative change to childcare in decades – making it tax free.

Cameron praises the government’s record on jobs. And he says the government has put more money in the pockets of families, by measures like increasing the personal allowance and freezing fuel duty.

Cameron says there are five factors that contribute to family security: jobs, money, homes, schools and savings.

Robert Peston, the BBC’s economics editor, has pronounced on Ed Balls’ speech on his blog.

First, he points out that George Osborne may actually revise his fiscal targets in next week’s budget. The Independent’s John Rentoul sums up this point in a tweet.

Second, Peston argues that achieving savings might not be as impossible as Balls suggests.

Finding a bit less than £30bn of additional spending cuts, as a Tory government would have to do, would be challenging - in that departments have endured years of squeeze already, and welfare savings are notoriously hard to deliver.

But Ed Balls’s central argument today that it would be completely impossible for a Tory government to protect health spending is probably not quite as watertight as he implies.

Here’s Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, on Ed Balls’ speech.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are saying they will lurch away from the centre ground. Labour will borrow too much and the Conservatives will cut too much. The Liberal Democrats have been the rock of financial stability during this recovery.

The Tories are already hitting back at Ed Balls using the Tory Treasury Twitter account, an official one.

Here’s the full text of Ed Balls’ speech.

Q: What is the single biggest threat to the future of our public services?

A Conservative government trying to implement these spending cuts, he says.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

I’ll post a summary soon.

Balls says that Labour would not let their plans to devolve spending powers to local councils stop councils fulfilling their obligations to build more homes.

Q: Will you ringfence the Foreign Office budget? It is going to have to deal with many crises in the coming years.

No, says Balls. The Foreign Office will have to play its part in finding cuts. But he accepts it has a vital role has to play. The Foreign Office will have to do a zero-based review, like the Treasury.

The Labour party is tweeting this, summarising Ed Balls’ argument.

Balls says Osborne does not appreciate how a growing economy, and growing tax revenues, can contribute to deficit reduction. He is more of a historian than an economist.

Balls says Osborne wants to cut the deficit purely through cuts.

Labour would get rid of the deficit through a mixture of cuts, tax rises and measures to stimulate the economy.

Q: What would you do about free bus passes for pensioners?

Balls says Labour would keep them. They introduced them. As people get older, they can sometimes drive less.

But the richest 5% of pensioners would lose their winter fuel payments.

Q: What is the size of the consolidation you would require in the first year.

Balls says, unlike the Tories, he is not planning tax cuts worth £10bn, or a £23bn surplus. So that frees up £33bn straight away.

From 2016-17, Labour would start from the government’s plans. Any changes to those would have to be paid for, he says.

Q: Should defence spending remain at 2% of GDP?

Balls says it is very important that Britain lives up to its international responsibilities.

But the fiscal challenge is big. Labour has said it will continue to cut spending in unprotected areas.

But Labour’s defence cuts would not be as severe as the Conservatives, he says.

And Labour would have a full defence review.

Q: Can you categorically rule out a deal with the SNP?

Balls says the SNP have said they don’t want a coalition with Labour.

He says no party in the last 100 years has fought an election proposing a coalition.

And it was the Tories who did a deal with the SNP in the Scottish parliament in 2007, he says.

Q: You voted with the Tories to cut the deficit by 2017-18. But on the Today programme Chris Leslie said that you might not cut the deficit until 2020. Which is it?

Balls says the vote was for a plan to cut the deficit over the three-year rolling timetable, which is consistent with Labour’s position.

Q: What would Labour do about the problem of financial exclusion and debt?

Balls says the key thing is to keep people in stable employment that pays.

Q: Aren’t you just scaremongering?

Balls says, before the last election, the Tories said Labour was scaremongering when it said VAT would go up, SureStart centres would be closed and tax credits cut. But that it what happened.

He says his analysis is based on OBR numbers.

These cuts are unprecedented. They would take us back to the 1930s. That is not scaremongering. Those are the facts.

Balls says he does not think the Tories would abolish the Foreign Office or the Department for Transport.

But they would have to find the money somewhere else.

Labour is just asking what they would do.

You can’t have a prime minister who refuses to debate, because people do not believe him.

Q: Will you do a deal with the SNP?

Balls says this is a scare from the Tories. David Cameron does not want to talk about debates, and he does not want to talk about his £70bn spending cuts. Labour wants a majority, and that is what it is focusing on.

Q: [From a Labour supporter] Thank you for treating us like grown ups, and giving us a proper analsis. That’s it.

Balls jokes that is the kind of question he likes.

Q: You are criticising the Tories, but not saying what cuts you would make.

Balls says the Tories want a surplus of £23bn by 2020. He is saying that is extreme. There is a clear choice.

The Labour plan is more balanced.

And the party has set out “a huge amount of detail” about his plans.

He would get rid of the deficit in three ways.

First, it would make sensible cuts. It has set out some.

Second, it would take difficult to raise taxes, such as putting the top-rate back up to 50%.

Third, it would promote economic growth, by backing increases in the minimum wage.

Balls summarises Labour economic policies.

And he says the choice for voters is now clear.

And the Tories have a choice. They can accept that these are the implications of their plans. Or they can admit their plans do not add up.

And that’s it. The speech is over.

Balls says Labour is now the centre ground party in British politics.

Unlike the Tories, they are not making unfunded commitments.

They want the OBR to be able to audit their plans.

Balls says his plans are different from the Tories.

First, there would have to be sensible cuts in some areas. For example, richer pensioners would lose the winter fuel payments.

The zero-based review has already published eight interim reports.

The recommendations include: saving £250m from the police budget, by getting rid of police and crime commissioners and improving police procurement; saving £500m from the communities budget by sharing services and backoffice collaboration; saving £70m from the courts budget by co-locating county and magistrates courts; saving £230m from wasteful expenditure on free schools; and saving £60m from savings in the defence budget.

Balls suggests that another option for Osborne might be to introduce charges into the health service.

Countries with public spending at 35% of GDP or lower have health systems were charging for health services is three times higher than it is in the UK.

It would be inevitable that the NHS would end up footing the bill, he says.

Balls says the implications are so colossal that George Osborne may have to put up taxes.

Is he planning to raise VAT? Balls says, when asked about this in parliament, Osborne just said he had “no plans” to raise VAT. The public won’t be fooled, he says.

Balls is now running through the impact of the Tory plans on departments with unprotected budgets.

The army would be reduced to its smallest size since Oliver Cromwell, he says.

The police would be smaller than at any time since records began.

And the cuts to social care would be equivalent to a third of people receiving care not getting it.

Balls says the government has not been able to get rid of the deficit because tax receipts have been lower than expected.

And the Office for Budget Responsibility expects the problem to continue into the next parliament, he says.

George Osborne knew this before the autumn statement, he says.

He could have chosen to relax the pace of spending cuts accordingly.

But instead, dogmatically, he chose to stick to his planned spending cuts. Robert Chote, the chair of the OBR, said that the spending plans would take public spending to its lowest level as a share of GDP since the 1930s.

The Tories have tried to claim their plans are not as extreme as people think. Osborne even lashed out at the BBC for reporting what the OBR said about public spending falling to 1930s levels, Balls says.

Balls says the Conservatives promises to increase living standards and balance the books.

But wages are down since 2010, he says.

For the first time since the 1920s, the average person will be worse off at the end of this parliament than at the beginning. To Ronald Reagan’s famous question, are you better off than you were at the last election, the answer is a resounding no, he says.

Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, has an interview in the Daily Telegraph today.

The paper has written it up as Alexander saying the Lib Dems will ban “potty” plans from George Osborne for pre-election tax cuts for high earners (although there is no evidence that this is what Osborne is planning in the first place). Alexander told the Telegraph:

The idea that we’d go for a fiscal loosening at the end of the Parliament, having been so firm on getting the deficit down for year – that would be completely potty.

Alexander also strongly hints that the budget will include a further increase in the income tax allowance. Asked about this, he replied:

I’m not going to get into what Budget decisions might be, but of course Nick Clegg and I take every opportunity we can to advance the case for delivering on that policy.

I committed several years ago to taking the personal allowance to £12,500 in the next Parliament. So I’m taking every opportunity to push with further progress with that.

Here are some of the main points from Chris Leslie’s Today interview earlier. (See 7.41am.)

• Leslie said the planned Conservative cuts would have a “cataclysmic” impact on social care.
  

The choice is between the cataclysmic scenario in which up to 240,000 people, elderly people, are going to have their social care taken away.

• He said the Conservatives would find it impossible to keep defence spending at 2% of GDP under their plans. He would not say how much Labour would spend on defence.
  

I do understand why people want to have that 2% target. I can’t give you commitments. I know it will be difficult to keep it that level at the 2% of GDP. I can tell you it is absolutely impossible on the Conservative trajectory.

• He said Labour wanted to get rid of the deficit “as soon as possible in the next parliament”. That meant by 2020 at the latest, he said, but the party would hope to achieve that sooner.
  

There are 59 days to go until the general election.

Here is today’s “election fact” from the Press Association.

MPs who wish to resign from the Commons between General Elections have to go through an ancient process, applying to the Chancellor for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in Buckinghamshire or the Manor of Northstead, now under a lake near Scarborough. These posts carry a nominal salary making them offices of profit under the Crown which bars holders from continuing as MPs. Incumbents then later quit the post, leaving it for future resignations. The last two applicants were UKIP MPs Douglas Carswell (Clacton), who took the Manor of Northstead, and Rochester and Strood’s Mark Reckless, who put in for the Chiltern Hundreds. Both quit to force by-elections after they defected from the Tories last year.

Chris Leslie, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, was on the Today programme at 7.10 talking about the Ed Balls’ speech, but John Humphrys insisted on asking him about the possibility of a Labour pact with the SNP.

This line of questioning infuriates Labour because they believe it plays to a Conservative agenda. The Times has splashed on the subject today.

Here’s how the Times story (paywall) starts.

The Conservatives will seek to heighten fears today among English voters over a potential electoral pact between Labour and the Scottish Nationalists.

David Cameron will present the party’s latest campaign poster by M&C Saatchi, depicting Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s breast pocket, in an attempt to scare those south of the border into voting Tory.

Lynton Crosby, the Tory election chief, brought forward the campaign to capitalise on growing divisions within Labour over a possible deal with the SNP. The poster will go on display across England today and Scotland later this week.

With the polls suggesting that the Tories and Labour will be almost neck and neck on May 8, Labour’s only hope for entering Downing Street would be to rely on the support of the 40 or more newly elected SNP MPs.

Ed Miliband tried to shut down the issue over the weekend. In an interview with the Daily Record he said that a pact with the SNP was “not on the agenda”.

And here’s the poster.

Here’s the BBC’s overnight round-up of what’s in today’s papers, including a picture gallery showing the front pages.

We’ve got two big speeches today, and a press launch. But Guardian readers will know that Patrick Wintour got hold of a draft of David Cameron’s speech, and wrote it up on Saturday, so perhaps I’ll be able to take the afternoon off.

Before Cameron stands up, Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, will give a speech attacking proposed Conservative spending cuts. He will also be releasing a dossier with a fresh analysis of the impact of the Tory plans. Labour released some extracts from the speech overnight, and this is what Balls will say.

The chancellor announced plans in last year’s Budget – re-confirmed in the autumn statement – which go way beyond balancing the books and aim for an overall budget surplus of £23bn by 2019/20.

And to deliver this goal, the chancellor set out tax and spending plans in that autumn statement – the defining fiscal moment of this parliament - which aim to take public spending back to 35 per cent of GDP.

This is a share of national income last seen in the 1930s according to the Office for Budget Responsibility – a time before there was an NHS.

The scale of these cuts is unprecedented. The analysis we are publishing today shows Tory plans mean spending cuts larger in the next four years than in the last five years. We are not even half way through the cuts the Tories are planning.

Spending cuts which are larger than any time in post-war history - a bigger fall in spending as a share of GDP in any four year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War.

Spending cuts which are larger than any other advanced economy in the world.

More extreme than in this parliament, the most extreme in post-war history and the most extreme internationally.

Here’s the full agenda for the day.

9.45am: Ed Balls gives a speech on proposed Conservative spending cuts.

11.45am: Nick Clegg and Vince Cable set out Lib Dem plans to promote economic growth.

Afternoon: David Cameron gives a speech on education and family.

3.15pm: HMRC, HSBC and the BBC Trust chair Rona Fairhead, an HSBC director, give evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about HSBC and tax avoidance.

As usual, I will be also covering all the breaking political news from Westminster, as well as bringing you the most interesting political comment and analysis from the web and from Twitter. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.