tweets, external:

BBC Breakfast

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is challenged about the Tory proposals to increase funding to the NHS by £8bn a year on BBC Breakfast. He says the Conservatives will find the money by sticking to their "economic plan which is working".

Asked about the coalition government's record on providing GP services Mr Hunt says: “I don’t agree we have got a bad record. There are 1,600 more GPs under this government."

He says successive governments have underinvested in GP practices. He plans to change that if he is health secretary on 8 May. Mr Hunt suggests the Conservatives can put three times more money into the NHS than Labour can under their economic plans.

Mr Hunt is asked whether the Tory NHS plan announced today has just been made up, after it is pointed out to him that the Prime Minister made no mention of the additional funding during the party leader’s debate just last week

“If I may say so, I think that’s a little bit disrespectful to the process that has been taking place in the NHS over the last year,” Mr Hunt says.

He adds the Conservative party has also been waiting for its manifesto launch.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Image source, Getty Images

UKIP would fund a pledge to provide 3,000 extra midwives and 20,000 extra nurses using measures such as cutting £10bn from foreign aid, scrapping HS2, and getting £2bn by "stopping health tourism", Louise Bours, UKIP's health spokesperson, tells Radio 5 live. "We've costed it completely... The money is there, we just have to manage it better."

On the Conservative pledge of £8bn extra annual funding for the NHS, she says:

If you're also wondering why Labour would have so many more seats that the Tories, despite being only 2% ahead nationally, part of that comes from Labour's seats largely being concentrated in urban areas - constituencies are based around population density. But also it's important to remember where the polls were five years ago and to compare.

So in 2010 the Conservative had 36% compared to Labour's 30%. Essentially, Labour are therefore up around 4%, and the Tories are down about 4%, compared to five years ago.That doesn't necessarily mean that voters have switched automatically from the Conservatives to Labour - some may have defected to other parties.

Image source, The Independent

The Independent has been talking to Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde, external, who has conducted a poll of polls taking data from the six biggest pollsters over the last four weeks. And it's not good news for the Conservative party.

The poll of polls shows Tory support slipping two points over that four week period while Labour support has "held steady" Professor Curtice tells the newspaper.

Here are the numbers:

Labour: 34%

Conservatives: 32%

Liberal Dems: 9%

UKIP: 15%

Green 4%

If that were repeated on polling day then Labour would win 302 seats, the Conservatives 262 and the Lib Dems would lose about half there seats.

That would mean Labour could, and we stress here "could", form a government with the Lib Dems. Up until now the assumption has been that Labour would be forced to form a coalition with the Scottish National Pary (SNP) in order to form a government because they wouldn't have enough seats.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Labour shadow health minister Liz Kendall tells Radio 5 live the Tories are relying on "fantasy funding" to fulfill an £8bn NHS pledge. "Neither of the parties [Tories and Lib Dems] have spelled out how they are going to provide any extra funding," she says. "What we've seen under this government is ripping away the foundations of the NHS, which is social care, which keeps elderly people living fit and well at home."

tweets:, external

Image source, Getty Images

It's not strictly the UK election, we know, but reports suggest that former US Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton will announce she is to run for US President on Sunday.

Mrs Clinton is expected to make the announcement at about 17:00 on twitter according to various US media outlets.

It will be the second time the 67-year-old Mrs Clinton has made a bid for the White House. She lost the Democratic party nomination to Barrack Obama in 2008, going on to serve as Secretary of State under in Mr Obama's first administration.

This time she is expected to face little in the way of opposition on her path to the nomination.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Image source, PA

The Conservatives will be able to fund their £8bn pledge through "a strong economy", health secretary Jeremy Hunt tells Radio 5 Live. "We can make this commitment because we have turned around the British economy. We're now creating a thousand jobs every single day, every one of those jobs is people paying taxes, it's companies paying taxes, and that, then generates the revenue that means we can give people the security... that when they get older, the NHS will be there for them."

There should be "serious sanctions" against large scale data theft, and people who illegally sell data, MP Julian Huppert tells the Today programme. On the question of government surveillance of online communications, Mr Huppert says: "If you want to be able to communicate securely with your bank, if you want to be able to ensure that other countries aren't able to monitor what is happening, you have to have secure encryption." There are "lots of other things" that can be done to tackle terrorism, rather than allowing blanket surveillance, he adds.

The Lib Dems are to propose a Digital Bill of Rights with the aim of beefing up existing data protection laws. Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert tells the Today programme: "The world is changing - there's so much more information. Our personal data online now - we don't really know what happens to it. Can hackers see our private photos? Are applications on our phones stealing our credit card data? Are governments hoovering up our personal communications? We have to set out a set of principles - we can't just tackle specific issues."

Image source, Getty Images

In response to the Tories' £8bn health pledge, Chris Leslie, Labour's shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, says the Conservatives are "making panicky promises". "Nobody will believe a word of this. The Tories have tried to announce this five times before, but they still can't say where the money would come from. And they haven't been able to say how they will pay for any of their panicky promises over the last 24 hours," he says.