Labour unveiled plans for a new National Health Service university yesterday and again promised to recruit thousands of extra nurses and doctors as part of its key election commitment on public services.
Trading political blows over the announcements, the Conservatives described the university proposal as a "gimmick", while the Liberal Democrats said in-house training was a positive step but would not prevent the "haemorrhage" of health workers to the private sector.
Launching the health service proposals, the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said he accepted there was "much more to be done" to improve the health service and to achieve that the organisation had to attract high quality staff and improve the skills of existing workers. Under a plan to establish the university by 2003, Labour will invite the health service and universities to form a partnership with the private sector to upgrade the skills of about 100,000 health workers.
Labour hopes that cooks and porters, as well as nurses and doctors will take up the opportunity to improve their career prospects by taking up courses in computing, management skills and nursing care.
Contrasting Labour's plans to increase investment in public services with what he claimed were Tory plans to cut public funding to pay for tax reductions, Mr Blair said a second-term Labour government would provide 20,000 extra nurses and 10,000 extra doctors.
He also pledged an extra £100 million a year to provide child-care services for health workers. The Health Secretary, Mr Alan Milburn, said cuts and charges were the "Tories' Trojan horse" for the health service. "When the Tories were last in power Mrs Thatcher started the destruction of the NHS, now Mr Hague demands the chance to finish the job."
The shadow health secretary, Dr Liam Fox, criticised Labour's plans, saying all the new doctors employed in the health service during the past four years began their training under the previous Tory government. The Liberal Democrat health spokesman, Mr Nick Harvey, said Labour had failed to tackle the "core issue of staff being underpaid and over-stretched".
Labour plans to increase the role of the private sector in delivering healthcare in a second term by using more private beds and surgical units. In an interview with BBC radio, Mr Blair insisted that an enhanced role for the private sector was "not privatising" the health service. But the proposals have increased fears on the left of the Labour Party and among nursing unions about the private sector's role.
At the Royal College of Nursing's conference in Harrogate, the general secretary, Ms Christine Hancock, expressed nurses' concerns that Labour was planning the "privatisation by stealth" of the service.
Delegates jeered the Health Minister, Mr John Denham, as he insisted there were 17,000 extra nurses and 6,000 more doctors working in the service under Labour and delegates criticised the fact that Mr Milburn did not attend the conference.