By Evan Davis BBC Economics Editor

All the parties agree that they are against waste - that's not very controversial.

Tory leader unveils spending plan

The Conservatives say they can make �35bn of savings - �13bn more than the government has come up with.

The Tories want to reduce the rate of absenteeism in the public sector and they want to cut the number of advertisements and consultants the government pays for.

They've got a whole lot of things - some big, some small, some detailed, some rather vague.

But it all adds up to about 235,000 civil service job cuts.

Even when you take into account that some of those jobs are being double counted because the government was going to cut them anyway, it is still challenging to find waste on that scale.

There will be people who say that none of this is very credible at all.

Spending plans

But the �35bn is not the most interesting figure here. The most interesting number they came up with today was �12bn.

That is the difference between their spending plans and the Labour Party's in 2007.

The Conservatives are planning to spend about 2% less than Labour and they are planning to tax a little bit less as well

That is the bit of their savings they are not going to plough back into public spending.

That really represents the choice we are going to have in the next general election.

What can the Conservatives do with that �12bn?

They can use it to cut public borrowing, or they can use it to cut taxes.

They are going to tell us on Monday how big a tax cut they can come up with.