THE election campaign rolled on today as the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls visited Swindon to announce a major new Labour policy.

Alongside South Swindon parliamentary candidate Anne Snelgrove and Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, the party announced a cut in rates for small businesses if Labour won the election on May 7.

Mr Balls said any company with a rateable value of under £50,000 would benefit from the cut. The chancellor said 6,000 firms in the town would benefit from the move.

The change would be paid for by freezing corporation tax, reversing the Government's final cut in corporation tax just weeks after it is due to come into effect.

He said: “Business rates have gone up by a huge amount over the last few years and we think if you want to grow small businesses and create jobs then if you give a £400 cut per year to small businesses then it will make a real difference. 

"It will help those businesses grow and become bigger employers in the future.”

The announcement was made at the Christchurch Community Centre in Old Town, which is in the South Swindon constituency.

After the announcement Mr Balls and Mr Umunna fielded questions from local politicians, traders and the media.

Shareen Campbell, who runs the Los Gatos tapas bar in Devizes Road and Bistro Les Chats in Wood Street, said tax evasion by small businesses had “become a national sport” because of the way the system was set up.

She said the level of business rates was “entirely disproportionate” to the size of the business and questioned Mr Balls on what she said was the high level of tax which customers pay when they eat out compared to the rest of Europe.

Mr Balls did not address her point over taxation on dining out in his reply and afterwards she said: “I don’t expect straight answers in a pre-election period but I would be worried if he couldn’t give them if he was in power.”

The Conservatives have warned that Labour's move on the corporation tax could lead to the loss of almost 100,000 jobs, putting economic security at risk, "for the sake of making a political point."

Meanwhile, David Cameron is pledging to help business create two million new jobs over the next five years if the Conservatives are returned to power.

Mr Cameron has said that Labour will not recover in Scotland unless the party rules out any deal with the SNP - and he questions if Ed Miliband is "strong enough" to stand up to SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and former leader Alex Salmond and their "transitional demands".

He told the Scottish Daily Mail that the Scottish Conservatives are the only party recovering north of the border because they have said they will not deal with the nationalists.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is focusing on the Liberal Democrats' plans to pump an additional £2.25 billion into improving mental health services if they are back in government.