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Woman's Hour takes a call from Sheila, who is living with Alzheimer's.

"There's never a day when I don't worry about my end of life care, wondering what it's going to be like, if we're going to be able to afford it," she says.

"If I had cancer, I could be fairly confident that I would be able to go into a hospice."

She worries that, in the case of dementia sufferers, "our families are going to have to sell our homes".

Emily Thornberry says dementia is seen as a social problem rather than a physical problem.

"Essentially, it is a tax. If you get dementia, you lose all your assets down to about £23,000. I know this because it happened to my dad."

She says the Conservatives propose charging people at home as well as in residential care - and calls for a cross-party consensus on the way forward. She adds that Tories tried to "fix this" during a snap general election campaign and "they have got unstuck".

Norman Smith
Assistant political editor

Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan really raised the stakes this morning over police numbers.

He says that not only have police numbers been cut significantly over the last few years, but there could be further cuts of between 10% and 40% to staff levels in the coming years.

We were expecting this argument to really kick off during the Woman’s Hour debate this morning, when Labour's Diane Abbott was set to take on Home Secretary Amber Rudd. However, Ms Abbott pulled out at the last moment.

It's not the first time she’s been absent and not feeling well at a key moment. You might remember the Brexit vote in the Commons when she couldn’t take part.

Cynics suspect that may be because some in Labour circles thought Emily Thornberry would be a safer pair of hands.

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UKIP MEP Margot Parker says food banks "are there as a safety net", adding: "No family should have to rely on food banks at all."

SNP candidate Kirsty Blackman calls the existence of food banks "scandalous".

She argues that this "shows that the welfare safety net is not working".

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Image source, HMRC

The Lib Dems' Jo Swinson agrees with Amber Rudd on the need for a strong economy to improve living standards, but says this shows the Conservative approach to Brexit "is so mistaken" because it puts that strong economy at risk.

She also attacks the so-called "rape clause". The government has limited child tax credit to the first two children but there are exceptions, including if a third or subsequent child was conceived "as a result of a sexual act which you didn't or couldn't consent to".

Ms Swinson says: "When you have to design a form like that, surely that is the point that you go back to the drawing board."

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Image source, Getty Images

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry says she visits food banks in her constituency and talks to people there. She also says there are children who return to school who "haven't been eating properly over the holidays".

"It's people who have been sanctioned [by the benefits system] who are relying on food banks," she tells Woman's Hour.

"I don't want people to go to food banks," says Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd, arguing, though, that most who use them "don't rely on them", but use then one, two or three times, maybe, during a crisis.

However, she acknowledges that benefit sanctions play a part and says she wants people to get into work, adding: "We need to make sure the economy can deliver that."

The politician is keen to say the government want to raise it, but does he know what it currently stands at?

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A caller says the Tories repeatedly claim more money is going into education, but will per pupil funding rise?

Kirsty Blackman says the SNP is spending more per pupil in Scotland than is spent in England but she accepts education in Scotland is "not perfect".

"We have made a positive difference" on things like reducing the attainment gap, Ms Blackman adds.

Conservative Amber Rudd says the most important thing is to see that standards are going up and it's "scandalous" that they've fallen in Scotland.

The home secretary says school budgets "have never been higher" but goes on: "The caller is right - that won't impact on per pupil funding in the way she would like."

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Lib Dem Jo Swinson, whose party has a policy of giving the people a referendum on a final Brexit deal, says "you can and you should" have that vote - and to get one, people "should vote Liberal Democrat".

She also attacks the SNP over its call for a second Scottish independence referendum, saying the party wants to leave "two unions", which means more "chaos".

But SNP candidate Kirsty Blackman says it is right that Scottish people should have a choice over their future.

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Should voters be given a second referendum on Brexit?

Unsurprisingly, UKIP's Margot Parker thinks not: "We had a vote last year in which it was laid out what people were voting for."

She adds that "there's a lot of nonsense talked" about a second referendum.

Tory minister Amber Rudd also rejects another vote, saying: "We should get on and make [Brexit] work for us."

Labour's Emily Thornberry also rules out the idea.

"We need to go forward with Brexit negotiations that bring the country together and that is hard" - but it is necessary to consider the 48% who voted to remain in the EU in last year's referendum.

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Former hospital chief executive Sir Robert Naylor recently produced a report for the Department of Health which argued that without investment "the NHS estate will remain unfit for purpose and will continue to deteriorate".

Sir Robert said that £10bn was required both for backlog maintenance work and transforming services, £5bn of which might be raised by selling off unwanted properties.

However, a caller to Woman's Hour says the Naylor report proposes "a fire sale of NHS assets and land".

For the Conservatives, Amber Rudd says the real scandal was PFI - the private finance initiative which the former Labour government used to fund hospital building, and which has been blamed for leaving many NHS trusts in debt.

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"What we want is more efficiencies in the NHS," says Conservative Amber Rudd. She says "of course, we want the NHS to be properly funded", but "we need to make sure we can pay for it out of taxation". The way to get more money from taxation is to have a strong economy - with more taxpayers - not higher tax rates, she adds.

"I respect Amber but she does talk a lot of nonsense sometimes," says Labour's Emily Thornberry in reply. "People love and respect the NHS and they want to see more money put into it."

She says Labour has tried to have cross-party talks on the future of the NHS and social care, but "the Tories basically pulled out".

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The Woman's Hour debate turns to the NHS.

Margot Parker says UKIP has "committed £11bn" to the NHS in the next Parliament. She says the party would also cut the foreign aid budget and scrap HS2, which she calls an "enormous waste of money".

Kirsty Blackman says the SNP supports more funding for the NHS in England as well as Scotland.

LBC

Paul Nuttall is defending UKIP's "one in, one out" immigration policy, saying current levels "can't continue".

He says a population the size of Hull's arrives in the UK every year - and one the equivalent of Birmingham every four years.

If this continues, motorways will need to be extended, a new rail network introduced and new schools built, he says.

There are 800,000 British 16-24 year-old who are unemployed, he goes on, adding that "at some point we've got to get our young people" in work.

"Before we had migration, our fruit wasn't rotting in the fields," he adds.

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Conservative Amber Rudd says pensioners "are not at risk" of losing free bus passes.

Labour's Emily Thornberry says an assurance that "there are no plans is not sufficient".

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A questioner on the Woman's Hour debate asks if Labour has a plan when the "top 1% of taxpayers" leave the UK over the party's planned tax rises.

"I don't think they will because frankly this is the best country in the world to live in," says Labour's Emily Thornberry.

"Frankly, if people want to go then fine", she adds - but she doesn't think they will.