David Cameron's plans for a 'luxury' health visiting service are based on a trip that his shadow cabinet colleagues made to Holland. This service is paid for by a top income tax rate of 52 per cent - which fits uneasily with the Conservatives' long-term agenda of tax cuts, writes Kevin Coyne

There are serious issues facing the health visiting profession - numbers are at a 14-year low and training places in England have been cut by some 40 per cent.

We have constantly emphasised to ministers the importance of health visitors in implementing the public health improvements that they seek and we take heart from health secretary Alan Johnson's pledge to last year's Labour Party conference that more health visitors are needed.

Future generations will benefit from the investment we, as a nation, make in health visitors today.

Kevin Coyne, head of health, Unite