Ed Miliband has admitted missing out a passage on the UK's financial deficit in his Labour Party conference speech.
In a round of media interviews he said 'one of the perils' of delivering a speech without a script was 'not remembering every detail'.
But he insisted that he had set out how Labour would tackle the economy and immigration, despite bits on both in the full script being being left out.
Chancellor George Osborne said omitting the deficit was 'extraordinary'.
Mr Osborne tweeted after the speech: 'Ed Miliband didn't mention the deficit once. Extraordinary. If you can't fix the economy you can't fund the NHS.'
A pre-prepared text of the speech later emerged which included passages on a promise to 'deal with our nation's debts' and another on immigration which Mr Miliband did not include in his conference speech in Manchester.
Shadow health minister Liz Kendall said: 'It was an hour-long speech and things always change in the delivery.
'I don't think anybody in the shadow cabinet is under any illusions about the scale of the challenge we face with the deficit, how we need to live within our means as a country, how we need to balance the books.'
She pointed out shadow chancellor Ed Balls had set out a range of Labour economic policies in his speech on Monday.
On Wednesday Labour is to give more details of its plan for the NHS, after Miliband's pledge to 'save and transform' it.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham will explain what a £2.5bn annual funding boost will mean for patients.
Mr Miliband, whose autocue-free speech lasted more than an hour, said his government would provide for 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs, 5,000 more care workers and 3,000 more midwives by 2020.
He said the 'time to care' fund would be paid for by:
raising £1.2bn a year through a 'mansion tax' on houses worth more than £2m a crackdown on tax loopholes used by hedge funds and other City firms, expected to raise £1.1bn requiring tobacco firms to contribute to the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses, raising about £150m
But BBC health correspondent Nick Triggle said it was 'not yet clear' what Labour's £2.5bn pledge would mean for the NHS.
'The coalition government has actually increased the budget by a similar amount in cash terms, but that only equates to 0.1% rises each year in real terms once you factor in inflation,' he said.
Setting out his 10-year plan to build a 'world-class Britain' at the Manchester conference, Mr Miliband promised to raise the minimum wage by £1.50 an hour by 2020 and give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote.
He also said Britain under Labour would be building 200,000 homes a year by 2020, and by 2025 he wanted as many young people taking apprenticeships as currently go to university.
Entities 0 Name: Miliband Count: 4 1 Name: NHS Count: 3 2 Name: Britain Count: 2 3 Name: Ed Miliband Count: 2 4 Name: City Count: 1 5 Name: UK Count: 1 6 Name: BBC Count: 1 7 Name: Ed Balls Count: 1 8 Name: Labor Count: 1 9 Name: Osborne Count: 1 10 Name: Manchester Count: 1 11 Name: George Osborne Count: 1 12 Name: Labor Party Count: 1 13 Name: Nick Triggle Count: 1 14 Name: Andy Burnham Count: 1 15 Name: Liz Kendall Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1uWEQCE Title: Ed Miliband's £2.5bn pledge puts NHS at heart of election battle Description: Ed Miliband has played what he hopes will be his trump card in the general election by promising 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more GPs in a £2.5bn-a-year move to make the state of the National Health Service the central issue for voters.
