Ed Miliband has hit out at David Cameron's pledge to pump an extra £8bn a year into the NHS by 2020, warning the PM: "You can't fund the NHS on an IOU."

The Labour leader was speaking after the Prime Minister pledged to protect the NHS by meeting its funding needs "in full".

Mr Cameron has promised to fund the five-year reform plan put forward by NHS chief executive Simon Stevens by providing at least an extra £8bn a year for the health service by 2020.

This will mean that over-75s will be guaranteed same-day access to GPs, patients will be able to see doctors out of regular office hours and the NHS will provide a full range of services seven days a week, according to Mr Cameron.

But Mr Miliband said: "We've seen five years of failure and broken promises from David Cameron on the NHS."

He added: "The truth is - you can't save the NHS if you don't know where the money is coming from.

"You can only damage the NHS when you are planning colossal cuts in public spending year after year after year, which is what this Tory government is planning.

"The choice is clear: a funded Labour plan for more doctors, nurses and midwives - or unfunded promises from a Tory party that has a record of breaking its word."

Labour on NHS

Labour has published a mini-manifesto on the NHS, which includes a new right to a dedicated midwife before and after childbirth.

Mr Miliband said this would be made possible by recruiting 3,000 extra midwives.

The party has already committed to providing an extra £2.5bn of health spending on top of the budgets provided by the Government to pay for more doctors, nurses and other health workers.

This would be paid for through taxes on expensive properties and tobacco companies and a crackdown on tax avoidance, the party claims.

In an effort to keep the pressure on Mr Cameron and the Tories about how they would fund the pledge, Labour tweeted a video of an exchange at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this year in which Mr Cameron said the "real risk" to the NHS was "unfunded spending commitments".

Asked how the Conservatives would fund the plan Mr Cameron did not go into specifics, but he said the pledge was possible "because we have a strong economy and because we have taken the long-term decisions necessary to put the NHS first".

Mr Miliband was pressed to say if he would commit his party to matching the £8bn pledge, but he declined.

Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Labour would put the future of the health service "at risk" because it would not match Tory funding commitments or their long-term economic plan.

Funding of the health service has emerged as one of the key issues of the campaign.

Mr Stevens predicted in a report in October that, if health spending rose only at the rate of inflation, growing demand for care would leave the NHS in England with a £30bn funding gap by 2020.

He said around £22bn of that could be met through "efficiencies", but the remainder would have to come from government funds.

Until now, only the Liberal Democrats had committed to finding the extra money.

Originally posted at 11.43am