Labour has launched an attack on the Conservative's handling of the NHS, with a brutal general election campaign poster that claims David Cameron would cut the health service "to the bone".
Unveiling the poster, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham insisted "the NHS is in no fit state to go on a white-knuckle ride. The Tories are completely silent on the NHS. They had nothing to offer it in the Budget and are desperate not to talk about it during the election campaign.
"The Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted a rollercoaster ride for public services in the next Parliament under these Budget plans. The trouble is, the NHS is in no fit state to go on a white-knuckle ride."
Labour said new analysis of Conservative spending plans showed the party is planning deeper cuts to public services in the next three years than any year of the last parliament.
Speaking at the EU summit in Brussels, Cameron said: "There is only one part of the United Kingdom where the NHS has been cut, and that is in Wales which is run by the Labour Party."
He added: "You know what you get with me - a Prime Minister who cares about the NHS deeply and will never see it cut under my leadership."
The Liberal Democrats muscled in on the row by editing the Labour poster to argue that it was their presence in the current coalition that had prevented the Tories cutting the NHS over the last five years.
Labour leader Ed Miliband is said to have talked of planning to "weaponise" the NHS as a campaign issue in the run-up to polling day on May 7. The party announced earlier this year that it would not feature Cameron on any of its posters, vowing to focus on issues, not personalities.