Mr Howard criticised Mr Brown's record

Speaking ahead of Wednesday's Budget, shadow chancellor Michael Howard said spending was about to pass the 50mph limit.

By that he meant that it was exceeding �50m an hour.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is widely expected to downgrade his forecast for economic growth and blame disappointing figures on a slowdown across Europe.

Mr Howard said: "It is not surprising that there is a growing feeling that people can't trust this government," he told journalists at a Conservative Central Office news conference.

"They can't trust it to reform and modernise the public services.

"And they can't trust it to look after the nation's finances and help business create the wealth on which we all depend."

Poll position

Mr Howard conceded that the kind of public discontent he was outlining was yet to be reflected in opinion polls.

Opinion would shift by the time of the next election - two or three years away.

"I think that people are waiting and seeing and are prepared perhaps, at this stage of the Parliament, to suspend their disbelief in the government's promises," he said.

A measure of the lack of confidence in health provision was that in the last year around 300,000 people opted to go private even though they had no insurance.

That was three times the level that Labour inherited in 1997, he said.

"I believe it is a scandal and an outrage that people in this country actually are dying as we speak of illnesses of which they wouldn't die if they lived in another country," he said.