Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Ed's Newsnight TV grilling on jobs, crime and fees where he repeatedly refused to admit he was incorrect about effects of Tory policy 

• e-mail

Ed Miliband last night repeatedly refused to admit he had got it wrong over the past five years about jobs, crime and the effect of tuition fees.

Labour has previously confidently predicted that the Coalition's austerity programme would see unemployment and crime soar, and the number of poor students going to university fall.

But, in each case, the opposite has happened – and last night the party's leader was challenged over whether this called into question the judgment of him and his team.

Scroll down for video 

The Labour leader rejected a string of statistics read out by Evan Davis on how the situation in all three cases had improved – saying these facts were not what voters were talking about

Mr Miliband repeatedly refused to admit he had got it wrong over the past five years about jobs, fees and crime

Mr Miliband replied: 'I don't think that's a judgment that people are going to make at the election.'

The refusal to accept that he had been proved wrong since the election came in a combative interview with Evan Davis on the BBC's Newsnight. 

The Labour leader rejected a string of statistics read out by Mr Davis on how the situation in all three cases had improved – saying these facts were not what voters were talking about. 

Mr Miliband also refused to say how much Labour would be borrowing by the end of the next Parliament, saying: 'The way you get credibility is not by picking out an arbitrary number in six years' time.'

And he gave the strongest indication yet that Ed Balls would be Chancellor in a Labour-led government.

Mr Davis brought up the subject of Mr Balls' comment four years ago that it was 'fantasy' to think Britain would get job growth with all the cuts being made in the public sector.

He asked the Labour leader: 'What's happened to jobs over the last five years?'

Mr Miliband replied: 'What Ed Balls was doing was quoting what the Office of Budget Responsibility were saying, which is there'd be a very, very big impact on public sector jobs, and there were deep questions about whether the private sector jobs could make up the shortfall.'

The Newsnight presenter challenged Mr Miliband on jobs, crimes and fees - but the Labour leader refused to admit he had got it wrong on each occasion 

In the interview, Mr Miliband refused to say how much Labour would be borrowing by the end of the next Parliament

When Mr Davis said he wanted to 'focus on the number of jobs', Mr Miliband had to admit: 'The number of jobs has gone up, but you know, I'm going to let people in this election make the judgment about whether that means the economy's fixed or not.'

Mr Davis interjected: 'It's gone up by two million, hasn't it? About a thousand a day.'

The presenter then moved on to crime; quoting shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper who said earlier this Parliament that the cuts are 'risking public safety and the fight against crime'.

When asked what had happened to crime, Mr Miliband at first answered: 'Violent crime's actually up. So there are worries about violent crime. And there are big questions about what's going to happen to policing in the next parliament.'

Mr Davis then asked him twice: 'What's happened to crime overall?', forcing Mr Miliband to reply: 'You're definitely right that there are a number of statistics that the Government cites to say everything's fine in the country and everything's doing well. Certain areas of crime have gone down; certain areas of crime have gone up. But let's go to the big argument of this election.'

Mr Miliband gave the strongest indication yet that Ed Balls would be Chancellor in a Labour-led government

The presenter interrupted him again to point out that the crime survey of England and Wales showed it was at its lowest level since 1981.

Mr Davis then moved on to the rise in tuition fees, quoting Chuka Umunna saying in 2010: 'How can these proposals do other than deter people from poor backgrounds from going to university?'

Mr Miliband said: 'What I know is that there are 12 times more people from advantaged, privileged backgrounds going to university than disadvantaged backgrounds. And that isn't good enough for me and the country.'

After the Labour leader declined twice to say what had actually happened to rates of enrolment from poorer students, Mr Davis told him the number had in fact increased by around a third.

Mr Miliband replied: 'There are some more people going to university from different backgrounds. So the problem's fixed is it?'

Asked: 'The judgment that was made was wrong?', he replied: 'No, it wasn't wrong. It isn't good enough for me that you're 12 times more likely to get to university from an advantaged compared to a disadvantaged background.'

Mr Davis asked: 'So on issues about jobs, crime, social mobility, comments, predictions made by people in your team turn out to have been wrong. These are important areas.

'These are not minor quibbles are they? These are huge issues that have had a large part to play in the last five years.'

■Fuel duty would rise 'in line with inflation' under Labour, climate change spokesman Caroline Flint said yesterday.

The last Labour government introduced the fuel duty escalator which saw the price of a litre of unleaded petrol rise by RPI inflation plus one pence. 

However, under the Coalition it was frozen for a fifth year in succession, allowing the Chancellor to boast that motorists have had '£10 off a tank with the Tories'.