Conservative Party leader David Cameron released the first part of his party’s manifesto today, focusing on the Tory plan for the NHS.

“As the party of the NHS, we will never change the idea at the heart of our NHS – that healthcare in this country is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay,” Cameron said in a statement on the Conservative Party website. “Labour promised to save the NHS but today, despite the massive increase in spending, the gap in health outcomes between the UK and the rest of Europe has actually widened.”

Read the Conservatives’ manifesto here.

In what The Independent called a “raid on traditional Labour territory” and “an apparent bid to stymie Labour’s portrayal of the Tories as the party of the rich few,” Cameron announced plans to focus NHS spending on the poorest areas and accused Labour of failing to deal with the health gap between rich and poor Britons.

Labour hit back by claiming that the Tories had a £34 billion “blackhole” in their spending plans, The Telegraph reported. At a press conference that the BBC noted was very much of the type seen during official election campaigns, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said, “The Tories have made over £45bn of promises, but can barely explain how they can pay for a quarter of this. This leaves them with a credibility gap of £34 billion.” Darling also issued a 148-page dossier on the alleged shortcomings of the Tory plan.

Chancellor Alistair Darling hit back at Tories today. Photo credit: London Summit

The Telegraph also reported that Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown “hope that their ‘forensic analysis’ of Mr Cameron’s spending plans can have the same effect that the Tory demolition of Labour’s 1992 shadow budget did on Neil Kinnock’s plans for office.”

Cameron responded by calling the document a “dodgy dossier full of lies,” The Guardian reported. The BBC reported that Cameron said that Darling’s claims were not based on any figures given out by the Conservative Party and were “junk”.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat party, told the BBC that the distance between the Conservative and Labour parties is decreasing. “You have the chancellor, Alistair Darling, who delivered a pre-Budget report where the sums didn’t add up and now accusing the Conservatives, because their sums don’t add up.”

The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, said that this opening salvo marks the beginning of what will be a “long, long” campaign. Prime Minister Gordon Brown must call a general election by June; some reports have claimed that he will do so on May 6, the date of local elections, while rumors still abound that Brown may call a surprise snap election in March to capitalize on the Conservatives’ dwindling lead.

In a somewhat related – or at least very timely – story, The Daily Mail also reported today that an 85-year-old grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s and who lived with the body of her dead husband for four days has been refused free care by the NHS.  Says The Mail, “The case once again highlights the unfairness of a system which classes many with dementia as eligible only for social care, rather than nursing care for health problems – which the Health Service has to fund by law.”