Daily Politics viewers comment on Ed Miliband's interview by Russell Brand:

Nick Clegg has dismissed Conservative promises to pass a law to prevent tax increases as a "a stunt". He told the BBC's Kamal Ahmed that the Conservatives were "in a panic because they've realised they're not going to win a majority".

Mr Clegg was visiting a school in Chippenham, with his wife, Miriam. He said: "The Conservatives want to impose billions of pounds of cuts on schools like this and nurseries and colleges up and down the country".

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Time for the closing statements in the Daily Politics’ NHS Election Debate now:

• Reversing the privatisation of the NHS means voting Green, the party’s health spokesperson Jillian Creasy says. She’d also end the target culture and improve health “for the largest number of people, not the profit of the few”.
• Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham says voters should remember that the NHS “stands at a crossroads”. Labour is the only party with a funded plan to turn it around, he says - contrast that with the Tories’ IOU.
• Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb says he wants to work with all the other parties to achieve a “new settlement not just for the NHS but for care as well”. He says the Lib Dems are on a “mission” to end the “outrageous discrimination” faced by mental health sufferers.
• Health secretary Jeremy Hunt says a million more over-70s will need to be treated by the end of the next parliament - he wants them to be treated with compassion. Mr Hunt contrasts his approach with the “ideologically” driven approach of Labour.
• Angus Dalgliesh of UKIP says his party has a “very well-costed plan” to fund the NHS by scrapping HS2, the Barnett formula in Scotland and the overseas aid budget. Only UKIP, he says, “is full of common sense enough to realise that money doesn’t grow on trees”.

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Now the NHS debate moves on to funding for the health service - bear in mind that the £8bn everyone’s talking about is what NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has made clear is needed, in addition to current funding levels, by 2020. Jeremy Hunt says he has “confidence” in the Tories’ “plan”. Andy Burnham says the Conservatives’ commitment is nothing more than an “IOU” - but of course he won’t commit to providing £8bn. “I won’t commit to making promises that we can’t honour,” he says. Labour is only prepared to guarantee an extra £2.5bn. Mr Burnham says this money is based on Treasury predictions, but the Lib Dems' Norman Lamb says the mansion tax cash won't show up until 2017/18.

S. J. Barnard:

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Andy Burnham is on the attack now, saying the NHS reforms are making doctors think they need to put all of their contracts out to tender to the private sector. In 2010 the total amount of NHS spending was 5%. It's now 6%, but Mr Burnham says he thinks this will rise to 7 or 8% any time soon. These numbers are rather lower than the 40% of contracts which Labour had pointed out are now being made over to the private sector. "I believe in the public NHS and what it represents - people before profits," he declares. "And I will fight for that principle."

How much of the NHS budget would Jeremy Hunt be comfortable seeing go to private providers? The health secretary doesn’t offer a number - he thinks services should be commissioned based on “what’s based for patients”. He adds: “I don’t believe politicians should be setting an upper limit or a lower limit - I think they should listen to what doctors say.” In his view there’s a danger of getting “obsessed” over this issue when politicians can miss “bad care” like Mid-Staffs as a result.

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Image source, Science Photo Library

UKIP's Angus Dalgliesh says it's OK to allow smoking in pubs, but not in parks. Jeremy Hunt says "there are times when the law has a role" in public health. "There are times when, yes, the state has a role, but it's much more difficult when it comes to things like alcohol pricing." Norman Lamb, who said he "absolutely" backs that policy, disagrees. He thinks it can make a big difference, too.

Would Andy Burnham ban pizza adverts, say, in the evening? "Possibly" was his one word answer. But he says he'd rather go for maximum legal limits on salt, fat and sugar in children's food. On adult food, he backs mandatory labelling.

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Postal ballots have been sent out in Kingston-upon-Hull with the names of two of the candidates missing - Labour's Karl Turner and the Green, Sarah Walpole. The mistake was made on 484 ballot papers. The acting returning officer, Ian Anderson has apologised, saying it was an "inadvertent mistake" that occurred on the second print run of postal votes for people who registered to vote after 1 April. He said he was investigating, with the printers, what went wrong. New postal votes are being sent out. The full list of candidates can be found here.

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The NHS debate takes an unexpected turn as participants face a series of quickfire questions. It's utterly bizarre - politicians are more or less offering simple "yes" and "no" answers. Extraordinary.

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On UKIP's health tourism question, the issue pushed by Nigel Farage in the challengers' TV debate earlier in this campaign, Jeremy Hunt points out that 20% of doctors in the NHS are immigrants. Care homes "would not survive" without the help of immigrants, too. Angus Dalgliesh of UKIP says immigration would continue to be allowed. "What we're against is uncontrolled immigration which puts a greater demand on the NHS."

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Andy Burnham is asked about some of the NHS' high-profile problems, like the 1,400 unnecessary deaths at Mid-Staffs. "Failures happen," Mr Burnham says. Those which happened before New Labour came to power weren't politicised. "The point is - do you learn from those failings?" He gives Jeremy Hunt credit for making some significant changes. Asked about his response to the emerging Mid-Staffs disaster, he says what he did - in avoiding a full judge-led inquiry - was the right thing to do because it gave the hospital a chance "to recover". Jeremy Hunt, responding, says he wants the NHS to be the "safest and most caring health system in the world". Norman Lamb says politicians should be "intolerant of poor care wherever it is".

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Jillian Creasy, of the Greens, says the demands on the NHS will always be going up. "For me the real pressures that are coming is because [of] the reorganisation," she says. Privatisation isn't exactly helping, either: "The very privatisation inevitably means a market system which is fragmenting and stops workers doing what they need to do." Isn't it just scaremongering, though? "What we're saying is that the clinical services should not be privatised," Ms Creasy says.

What about UKIP's view? Services contracted out to the private sector aren't privatisation if they are "well audited", Angus Dalgliesh - pictured above - says. It would be much better for services in the majority of cases that relate to patient care to remain in the public sector, he says.

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This is the second election in a row when the Conservatives are promising to spend more money on the NHS than the Labour party, Jeremy Hunt points out. Norman Lamb says the £8bn needed for the NHS means Labour are a long way off being able to fund the health services. He calls Andy Burnham's plans "a recipe for disaster". Mr Burnham responds by saying his party is the only one to have a "funded plan". That is "absolute nonsense", Mr Hunt says, "and you know it".

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Defending the coalition's NHS reforms, Jeremy Hunt says the "principle" of Andrew Lansley's reforms is supported - but he says "I might have tried to communicate them in a different way because they weren't very popular". As Norman Lamb puts it: "Every party needs to learn the lesson that we should have no more top-down reorganisations." Andy Burnham says both of them are "backing off". He says their parties both "pulled the rug from underneath the NHS just when it needed stability" - and the big problem is the reforms have now put "market forces" into the HNS. "Nobody in this country voted for that," he says.

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There are a million more operations taking place now, Jeremy Hunt says - and he forces Andy Burnham to accept that is the case. But the Labour shadow health secretary hits back, saying that the problems in A&E "might have something to do" with spending cuts, too. Mr Hunt says he backs "an NHS doing very well under a great deal of pressure. What is wrong is trying to politicise those pressures". His coalition colleague, Norman Lamb, calls for a "bit of honesty here" and agrees that those pressures should be acknowledged. Angus Dalgleish, of UKIP, says more investment in heavy equipment is needed "in order to improve some of our delivery."