Teachers are "facing the sack" up and down the country, Iain Duncan Smith has told MPs.

Launching an attack to the government's record on schools, hospitals, crime, transport and tax the Conservative leader said the picture was one of failure.

"After six years of Labour government the tax burden is up for every household by £5500. In return they, the taxpayers, have received teacher redundancies, falling hospital admissions, more violent crime and a transport system in chaos," he said.

"And for all his talk of reform in the public services isn't it the case that after six years of this Labour government, all we have is more tax, more waste and more failure."

Listing Labour's failings, Duncan Smith said the education department withheld £1 billion from schools last year.

And the NHS now had "12,000 more bureaucrats than beds".

Violent crime is "up 20 per cent in the last year alone" while the tax bill of the average household had soared "by £5500 a year" under Blair's stewardship.

The prime minister hit back, warning that the Tories were planning to cut 20 per cent from schools, hospitals, transport and crime.

"We have the best primary school results this country has ever seen. We have the best GCSE results we have ever seen," said Blair.

"We have the largest hospital building programme underway since the beginning of the 1948 National Health Service.

"We have more nurses. Every single waiting time and waiting list nationally is in a better position than it was in 1997. And crime is down not up."

"I look forward to talking to him about jobs, mortgages and inflation," he added.