Highlights: Britain's second election TV debate

BRISTOL, England (Reuters) - The three main candidates to be the next British prime minister took part in a second televised debate on Thursday ahead of a national election on May 6.

Following are some of the comments from Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

ELECTION PLEDGES

BROWN

"I've got one or two problems with the manifestos of the other two parties...they don't seem to have mentioned free prescriptions for the elderly or free eye tests."

CAMERON

"I just think it's disgraceful to try and frighten people in an election campaign as Gordon Brown has just done and as the Labour party are doing up and down the country. I'd like to take this opportunity to say very clearly to any pensioner in the audience, to anyone listening at home, that we will keep the free television license, we will keep the pension credit, we will keep the winter fuel allowance, we will keep the free bus pass."

HUNG PARLIAMENT/ECONOMY

BROWN

"David (Cameron), you're a risk to the economy, Nick's (Clegg) a risk to our security with his nuclear weapons policy."

CAMERON

"If there is a hung parliament we must be responsible, we must try and deliver the best government we can for this country ... I don't think a hung parliament would be good for Britain because I think we do need quite decisive government to take some of the difficult decisions for the long term. We've set out some of the things that need to be done to get the debt and the deficit under control and I fear if we put them off we could have a situation where we see interest rates rise, we see confidence taken out of our economy."

CLEGG

"I do think there is potential for politicians to work together. Don't believe all these ludicrous scare stories about markets and political Armaggedon if that (a hung parliament) is what happens."

EXPENSES SCANDAL

CLEGG

"We need to make sure that people are responsible where they have made big mistakes. It is a fact that there are a number of MPs in both the old parties who flipped their home from one to the next ... who still haven't been held to account."

CAMERON

"I think they (the public) are now starting to get angry by some politicians saying 'Well my party was much better than all the others.' Frankly Nick we all had problems with this, whether it was moats or whether it was politicians claiming on phantom mortgages or whether it was kitchens and cake tins and the rest of it. Don't anyone try and put themselves on a pedestal over this issue."

BROWN

"Noone should be standing at this election if they are not transparent and tell you everything about what they are doing with their finances."

ECONOMY

BROWN

"This is a big choice election. We've got to secure the recovery, and it's put at risk by Conservative policy. We've got to make sure we have decent public services, and that's put at risk by Conservative policies. We've got to build the jobs of the future, and that's put at risk actually by the policies of both these parties."

ENERGY

CLEGG

"I don't have a theological opposition to nuclear power. I just think it's extraordinarily expensive, very, very, expensive indeed. There are some calculations that it will lead to average energy bills actually increasing in this country rather than decreasing. And it takes a long, long, long time to build these new nuclear plants."

BROWN

"You can't have a balanced energy policy in the modern world ... without using nuclear power."

CAMERON

"According to the government's own figures we are potentially heading for power cuts in 2017 and actually nuclear power stations won't really come onstream by then so we actually have a greater emergency."

ENVIRONMENT

CLEGG

"What is irrational is that at the moment you have a tax system that taxes passengers in planes...you've got lots of planes that are half empty, or barely have any passengers at all. If you change that to a plane tax you make a dramatic difference in cutting down unnecessary aviation pollution."

CAMERON

"I think there's a bit of a con going on here. The Lisbon treaty has just seven words on climate change. You don't need another treaty, for politicians to get together in foreign countries, you need political will, you need action."

CLEGG

"Of course you don't need another treaty but you do need to work with people who actually believe that climate change exists."

Defense

BROWN

"I have to deal with these decisions every day and I say to you, Nick (Clegg): Get real. Get real. Iran, you're saying, might be able to have a nuclear weapon and you wouldn't take action against them. But you're saying we've got to give up our Trident submarines. Get real about the dangers we would face if we had North Korea and Iran (obtaining nuclear weapons)."

CAMERON

"I profoundly believe that we are safer having an independent nuclear deterrent in an unsafe and uncertain world, a proper replacement to Trident. We simply don't know what the world will look like in 40 years time."

CLEGG

"I wouldn't carry on spending money on the Eurofighter Typhoon, the third tranche of that Eurofighter project is consuming billions of pounds. I don't think it's right to do what Gordon Brown and David Cameron want which is now to commit before even making a decision, to spend up to 100 billion pounds renewing in exactly the same old way the Trident nuclear missile system."

AFGHANISTAN

CLEGG

"Clearly the principle of the reason why we went into Afghanistan, why I supported our mission in Afghanistan, unlike the illegal invasion in Iraq, is to keep us safe, not just sort of parachute democracy into Afghanistan. It's because we believe if you allow Afghanistan to become a haven of extremism and terrorism, there will be more terrorist attacks here in Britain. So, from that principle, if we need to do that again we should."

"The problem is that we've done it in a manner where I don't think we've pursued the right strategy, we haven't given the right equipment to our troops, we haven't had proper international coordination on the ground in Afghanistan."

BROWN

"Why are we in Afghanistan and why have we got to be vigilant all the time? The reason is there is a chain of teRror that links these al Qaeda groups in different parts of the world to action that could happen in the United Kingdom."

CAMERON

(On future military interventions) "If I was your prime minister I would want to think very carefully what is in the national interest, what will make us safer here in the United Kingdom ... If you look at future operations like that, we have to learn from the mistakes of the past."

EUROPE

CLEGG

"How on earth does it help anyone in Bristol or anyone else in the country for that matter, David Cameron, to join together in the European Union with a bunch of nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes -- that doesn't help Britain."

BROWN

"You both remind me of my two young boys squabbling at bathtime. Squabbling about whether to have a referendum on the European Union. What we need is jobs, and growth and economic recovery."

"Let's not have a Britain only solution, let's not go back to the days when we were fighting with the rest of Europe."

CAMERON "I think we should be in Europe because we're a trading nation, we're part of Europe, we want to cooperate and work with partners in Europe to get things done. But I do agree with you that we have let too many powers go from Westminster to Brussels .... I don't want us to join the euro, I want us to keep the pound as our currency ... President Nicolas Sarkozy stands up for France in Europe, Angela Merkel of Germany, she stands up for Germany in Europe. I would do the same for Britain."

OPENING STATEMENTS

CAMERON

"I want us to keep our defences strong, I want to keep our borders secure and our country safe. Real change comes not just from politicians but from when we all recognize that we have responsibilities, that we're all in this together."

CLEGG

"I want us to lead in the world. I want us to lead in Europe, not complain from the sidelines, I want us to lead in creating a world free of nuclear weapons. And I want us to lead on the biggest challenge of all, climate change."

BROWN

"This may have the feel of a TV popularity contest but in truth this is an election about Britain's future. If it's all about style and PR count me out. If it's about the big decisions, if it's about judgment, if it's about delivering a better future for this country, I'm your man."

"Like me or not I can deliver that plan and the way to do it is with a majority Labour government."

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon, Adrian Croft, Mohammed Abbas and Rosalba O'Brien)