The UK-based brother of US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has been appointed as the Green Party’s new health spokesperson.

Larry Sanders, the party’s former candidate for the Oxford West and Abingdon seat, is now Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham’s counterpart for the environmentalist party.

Bernie, a self-described US socialist senator in Vermont, is vying with Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for US president.

Larry, who has 30 years’ experience working in the health sector, was elected as a Green councillor on Oxford County Council in 2005.

The British-based brother grew up with his sibling in New York but moved to the UK in 1969. He has been an active member of the Green Party of England and Wales for well over a decade.

“If we want to make the nation healthier, we need to do it by investing in more than the NHS. For example, in housing, we need to insulate our homes better, a measure that could have a profound impact by making the poorest in our society warmer and healthier,” Mr Sanders said.

“I also want to do everything I can to make sure that Caroline Lucas’s NHS Reinstatement Bill makes it through Parliament. This cross-party initiative could act as a roadblock to NHS privatisation and this, for me, is the single most important issue.

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“2016 should be another good year for the Green Party, but we’re not in the public’s eye as much as we should be. We’re the only party that is consistently speaking out against NHS privatisation and we know that the public will support us on this issue.

“We just need to be given the opportunity to tell them about the full extent of what’s being done by hard-working Green councillors and activists up and down the country.”