Miliband to set out NHS care policy

The Labour leader will back shadow health secretary Andy Burnham with a policy pledge to ensure funds are made available to provide more nurses.

Crucially, he will say, the focus will be on driving out the culture of limiting social care at home for frail, older and vulnerable to just 15 minutes, saying it is a symbol of what has gone wrong in the NHS where failure and false economies threaten the financial future of the service.

Mr Miliband will use an NHS speech to set out his party’s commitment to “Build an NHS with the time to care: 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more GPs. Join up services from home to hospital, guaranteeing GP appointments within 48 hours and cancer tests within one week.”

He is expected to say: “When you look at his record for the last five years and his plan for the next five years, you know David Cameron can’t be trusted with our NHS. He puts the wrong values at the heart of our NHS and he just won’t put the right resources into our NHS. That means you will wait longer and longer for care, forced to go private if you want timely treatment, with more and more services hived off to the private sector.

Speaking on how he will use a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2m to fund the NHS, Mr Miliband will add: “We are the only party whose plans are fully funded, costed and based on the right principle that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden.

“And we will use that money for a plan to train and hire more doctors, nurses, care-workers and midwives so that they all have the one thing that patients need most: an NHS with time to care.”