JEREMY CORBYN warned last night of “a state of emergency” in local services following seven years of Tory cuts.

The Labour leader said the emergency is most acute in social care, calling it an “absolute scandal” that 1.2 million elderly people lack the care they need.

Addressing Labour’s local government conference in Warwick, he said: “By cutting billions of pounds from local government, Downing Street has created a social care crisis which, according to a study published just yesterday in the journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, was linked to 30,000 excess deaths in 2015.

“People are dying because of the choices made by this government.

“Councils are at breaking point on social care. Decent people deserve decent treatment. Our social-care system has been privatised, outsourced and cut. It has dehumanised our parents, grandparents and neighbours.”

He blasted that the government was neglecting “people who have worked and contributed to our communities, and now are being let down by Theresa May’s Conservative government in Downing Street.

“This is a government that gives billions away in tax breaks to big business and the richest — and pays for it by cutting the services to the most vulnerable.

“It is that callousness, even brutality, that has tipped local services into a state of emergency.”

Mr Corbyn also addressed the forthcoming by-election in Stoke-on-Trent central, where Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is trying to unseat Labour after scab historian Tristram Hunt took a cushy job elsewhere.

“This by-election is a chance to reject the division and lies of Ukip,” he said.

“We aim to defeat Ukip’s politics of hate in Stoke with Labour’s politics of hope and community.”

The publicity surrounding Mr Nuttall’s lies linking him to the Hillsborough disaster are expected to help Labour’s Gareth Snell in the contest.

Mr Corbyn added: “Ukip’s politics of hate will not save children’s centres. Hatred won’t build homes. It won’t create jobs and it won’t fund health and social care. It won’t bring our people dignity or bring our communities together.”

In his keynote speech at Ukip’s annual conference yesterday, Mr Nuttall vowed to cut foreign aid, slash taxes and scrap VAT on fish and chips.

Labour’s elections and national campaign co-ordinator Ian Lavery commented: “You cannot trust a word Paul Nuttall says. He’ll say anything to try and get elected.

“Paul Nuttall does not stand up for working people, just as he does not stand up for the people of Stoke.

“All he wants is to get to Westminster to back the Tories and privatise our NHS.

“A vote for him is a vote to break up the health service as we know it.”

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