THE BRITISH Labour Party's spokeswoman on health, Ms Harriet Harman, yesterday fought back in the ongoing row over her of an elitist school for her 11 year old son.
British Labour Party policy is that there should not be selection for school places.
In a House of Commons debate on the National Health Service she challenged heckling Tories with statistics about services in their own constituencies.
For Conservatives, this was yet another chance to maximise Labour's discomfort at Ms Harman's decision to send her 11 year old son to St Olave's, a selective grammar school in Orpington, Kent, miles away from their London home.
But Ms Harman with her husband, Mr Jack Dromey, watching from the public gallery insisted "This debate is about the crisis in the NHS."
But Tories as well as Labour MPs cheered when the Labour Party leader, Mr Tony Blair, and his deputy, Mr John Prescott, arrived to sit with her on a crowded Opposition front bench.
Despite the bitter controversy which has led some Labour MPs to demand her resignation, she was warmly cheered by backbench colleagues when she rose to open the debate.
Earlier, in an emotional speech at a stormy meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Ms Harman faced down calls to resign but apologised for any succour" she had given the Tories. Mr Blair threw his full support behind her.
Mr Blair made a passionate appeal for unity to members of his party as he struggled to defuse the which has damaged his image.
Mr Blair told the meeting that he would not sack Ms Harman.
"I am not yielding any scalps to the Tory party," aides quoted Mr Blair as saying. "The Tories want to make this issue a political football, and they will fail."
Mr Blair's speech came at the end of a heated debate, during which Ms Harman apologised to her colleagues for the "diversion" it had caused.
"I understand the strength of feeling and I deeply regret the distress that has been caused," she told fellow MPs.
But Ms Harman said she had acted, in the best interests of her son given that Labour was not in power and could not implement its policy for all ability comprehensive schools.
The chairman of Labour's parliamentary party, Mr Doug Hoyle, said the debate had been robust. Many members voiced their opposition to Ms Harman's decision, calling it hypocritical.
"It was a hard hitting affair. There were no punches pulled," Mr Hoyle told BBC radio.
Ms Harman said in the Commons that the debate on the NHS was "about, the, hundreds of patients who wait on trolleys for emergency treatment, it's about the thousands who are denied the treatment they need, it's about the millions of people who no longer feel they and their families can rely on our NHS.
"The people of Britain want to know the answer to a very simple question why is our great NHS being torn limb from limb by this Tory government?"
"Why is the NHS that the Tories claimed to be safe in their hands being savaged in their hands?