Miliband to use Leeds rally to defend NHS

Mr Miliband will tell a Labour rally in Leeds that the Tories will seek to introduce “the biggest cuts anywhere in the developed world”.

Labour has repeatedly sought to move the election debate back to the NHS after spending days on the defensive over the potential for a coalition with Scottish nationalists.

The party said that the Conservatives were seeking to cut state spending by three per cent of national income, warning that in ten similar countries looked at by economic experts at the OECD, public health spending fell by an average of one per cent of GDP when such deep cuts were made– equivalent to a real terms cut of £7bn to the NHS.

Mr Miliband is expected to say: “This General Election is coming down to a straight choice about who will stand up for working families: a choice between another five years of a recovery just reaching big firms in the City of London with the Tories - or Labour’s better plan to ensure the recovery reaches the front doors of working people across Britain.

“And, with two weeks to go, it’s time that choice was made plain and clear. The Tories want to pretend that another five years of their failing plan is the route to the good life. But the truth is they are engaged in a grand deception.

“David Cameron is running a desperate campaign, talking about anything but their record of failure or their plans for the future. They might not want to talk it, but we will.

“The Tories are committed to the most extreme spending plans of any political party in generations.

“It is a plan so extreme that IMF figures show Britain would be facing the deepest cuts over the next three years of any advanced country in the world.

“It is a plan so extreme that far from protecting the NHS they would end up cutting the NHS.

“It is a plan so extreme that it wouldn’t mean three years of the good life, it would mean three years of hard times.”

Mr Miliband will add: “David Cameron has broken all those promises he made before the last election.

“He promised there would be no more top-down re-organisations and then wasted billions on the biggest the NHS has ever seen.

“He stood outside a hospital with a sign that said there would be no cuts and no closures – only to shut that very same A&E.

“He said there would be no return to people waiting hours on end in A&E. But under his government, A&E targets are in tatters and patients are waiting longer and longer to be seen.”

The Labour leader is expected to address NHS staff from across the region in his Yorkshire rally.