Ukip's health policy would include spending more on fighting dementia
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Version 0 of 1. Ukip would spend £130m per year on fighting dementia – £650m over the next parliament – double what the Conservatives have pledged, the party’s health spokeswoman will announce on Monday. In a speech in Rochester – which is represented by Ukip MP Mark Reckless – MEP Louise Bours will set out the party’s health policies, steering away from Ukip’s usual focus on immigration and Britain’s membership of the EU. Related: Ukip health spokeswoman rejects Nigel Farage’s views on NHS reform Ukip will challenge Labour on its key battleground of health, repeating a pledge to invest £3bn more on NHS frontline services, and will target elderly Conservative supporters by promising to increase funding for elderly social care to £1bn per year. Bours, who admitted to having known “absolutely zero” about the NHS when she started as the party’s health spokeswoman, will announce plans to require NHS managers to be licensed as doctors and nurses are, to scrap hospital parking charges – a move funded by tackling health tourism – and to abolish the Care Quality Commission. Ukip would scrap tuition fees for medical students on a means-tested basis and reinstate the role of “state enrolled nurse”– an assistant nurse who is trained on the job – to create more homegrown medical talent. Ukip says it would save billions from the country’s budget by leaving the EU, slashing foreign aid and cancelling HS2, giving them funds to channel into the NHS and other areas of public services. The announcement will come the day after a former Ukip councillor in Thanet, Rozanne Duncan, said she had “no regrets” for comments she made on the documentary Meet the Ukippers, broadcast on Sunday night. Related: Labour candidate: we face 'existential threat' from Ukip in south Duncan told the documentary makers that “the only people I do have problems with are negroes”. She was expelled from the party when details of her comments emerged. The shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, said that a “virus of racism” was “undoubtedly present at the heart of [Ukip]” and that such comments should be taken very seriously as the Eurosceptic party is now one of Britain’s main political parties. “It is true that all political parties have their bad apples and will occasionally have candidates or elected representative saying totally unacceptable things, but the problem that [Ukip has] got is that there is a pattern here”, he said. “My problem has been all along that the kinds of things Ukip representatives are saying about eastern Europeans are exactly the same kinds of things that people were saying about black and Asian people, like my father, who arrived here in the 1960s and 1970s.” Umunna said he was not suggesting that every member of Ukip was racist and said that many people would vote for Ukip for reasons that had nothing to do with race. “But when we see extremism, we are entitled to point out to the public that this is what comes with that package”, he said. “Ukip is a problem for British democracy”, he said. “I think where we see extremism it needs to be challenged.” Umunna refused to be drawn on the question of whether Labour would ever go into government with Ukip, saying that his party was aiming for a majority and would not speculate on possible coalition partners. But Labour sources say that a number of shadow cabinet members would refuse to sit in a government with the party. |