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We ask the main political parties: What do you have to offer nurses?

The party leaders set out their stall on healthcare

What will the health candidates do for nurses? Watch the coverage.

Transcript

Jeremy Hunt - Conservative
I want our NHS to be the safest, the most caring health care system anywhere in the world, and nurses are fundamental for that. We now have a thousand more nurses in our hospitals compared to five years ago and we are tackling the short staffing that happened at Mid Staffs. Going forward the real need now is for more nursing in the community - more district nurses, more practice nurses, more community nurses. I want to value the really important work that nurses do in the community, and make sure that we are able to treat every single person with dignity and respect and to the highest standard of national care - something that I know every single nurse wants whole heartedly.

Andy Burnham - Labour
Labour will value and respect the nursing workforce - we will begin immediately by increasing the number of training places from this September, as part of our plan to recruit 20,000 extra nurses. That's the only way we can break the whole of the staffing urgency over the NHS. We will reinstate the Independent Pay Review Body to bring fairness back to pay, we will protect the Unsocial Hours Payment for NHS staff, but more than anything we will restore the right values back to the heart of the health service that matters so much to nurses: integration over fragmentation, collaboration before competition, people before profits.

Julia Reid - UKIP
UKIP are committed to providing 20,000 more nurses and 3000 more midwives and for increasing the number of training places for UK nurses - there used to be I think 23,000 nurses trained a year but this figure has been cut. We also would like to bring in earn-as-you-learn for the state-enrolled nurses that we used to have years ago. And it would be possible for health care assistants to train towards this, and also to continue their career progression.

Norman Lamb - Liberal Democrats
The really critical thing for nurses is that we ensure that we're making the necessary investment in the NHS, and the Liberal Democrats are the only party to have committed to the £8m funding gap that will exist by 2020 and to have demonstrated where the money is coming from. And beyond that we want a non-partisan commission set up this year, straight after the election, to engage with clinicians, the public, trade unions and patient groups, to ensure we achieve a new settlement for the NHS, to ensure it is sustainable, and the nurses have a good future in the NHS.