Analysis By Jenny Scott BBC Economics correspondent

Michael Howard: Making the sums add up

The Shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard, is the man the Conservatives are counting on to make their pledges add up.

And there have been a lot of pledges this week. There's more money for older voters with the promise that the link between pensions and earnings will be restored, more policemen on the beat with 40,000 new recruits, the abolition of university tuition fees and support for private health care.

But how would the Conservatives pay for all those promises?

And would there be any money left over for tax cuts?

Adding up the sums

Take the abolition of university tuition fees.

COST OF TORY PLEDGES Abolish tuition fees: �700m More police on the beat: �2.1bn Link pensions to earnings: �500m (after four years)

The Conservatives estimate that would cost around �700m.

They say the policy would be funded by scrapping Labour's target to increase the number of university admissions from the current 43% to 50%.

Hiring extra policemen would also be self-funding.

By the end of a first term of a Conservative Government, the net additional cost would be around �980m a year, which would have provided 20,000 additional officers.

That cost accelerates to �2.1bn over the following four years, to bring the number to 40,000.

The Conservatives say that would be funded by reducing the number of asylum seekers to a maximum of 20,000 a year, from the current 100,000, and processing their applications offshore.

Both those figures appear to stack up - but conducting a detailed audit is difficult when, for example, the Conservatives admit they don't even know exactly where asylum seekers would be dealt with.

Pension puzzle

Pensions is even more difficult.

Restoring the link between pensions and earnings (which the Conservatives abolished in the 1980s) would cost �500m after four years.

That would be paid for partly by scrapping Labour's New Deal to help the long-term unemployed, and partly by reducing the number of pensioners who qualify for means-tested benefits.

A higher state pension would push more people out of the qualifying range of those benefits.

However, there is no mention of how the policy would be funded in subsequent years.

Linking pensions to wages gets more and more expensive as time goes on, as the number of pensioners is rising and the amount each one gets is rising too.

The savings from scrapping welfare reforms won't increase at anything like the same rate.

In other words, the Conservatives' new pension policy simply exacerbates the problem of a mounting pensions bill.

Long-term problems

So while the policy proposals may be affordable in the short-run, there are serious funding concerns further out.

That makes tax cuts look particularly tricky.

Michael Howard has made his intentions there clear, telling the conference "We will always be a lower tax government than Labour. We do plan to cut taxes".

However, it's an expensive business. A one penny cut in income tax costs around �3bn.

And that's against a backdrop of already deteriorating public finances.

The Treasury's latest estimates show government debt increasing from �367bn this year to �472bn by 2007/8.

That takes debt from 32.2% of GDP to 33.8% - a significant rise, but one that still leaves debt comfortably below the Treasury's self-imposed 40% ceiling.

The Conservatives say they'll finance tax cuts through efficiency savings.