Osborne to make keynote address

In a keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, he will set out his stall to voters as a convincing alternative to Chancellor Alistair Darling.

Calling for a "wholly different approach" to Labour's, Mr Osborne will say the current crisis raises "the most profound questions" about the financial system and its regulation.

The Conservatives unveiled a "reconstruction plan" on Sunday requiring governments to reduce national debt over an economic cycle.

They would set up an independent Office for Budget Responsibility to keep track of the public finances and set out changes to tax and spending plans necessary to slash debt.

The Bank of England would be given a bigger role in market oversight, with a new requirement on it to make regular assessments of the market-wide risk caused by debt.

That would be used by the Financial Services Authority in regulating lending by individual financial institutions.

Mr Osborne's speech comes with the economy at centre-stage amid the global financial crisis.

Addressing Tory delegates, Mr Osborne will mock Gordon Brown's demand for an end to what he last week called the "age of irresponsibility".

Criticising the amount of credit that Britons have been allowed to build up, he will say the Government did not stop to think what would happen if the supply dried up.