Michael Howard has outlined the Tories' £52m action plan for tackling the MRSA superbug.

Setting out the 10-point plan, the Opposition leader said the NHS was failing in its most basic duty, with government targets contributing to the death of patients.

Under the strategy, matrons would be given new powers to close wards they believed were unsuitable.

Howard posed for a photo with eight "modern matrons". 

Asked by a journalist to raise their hands if they would vote Conservative, they all kept them by their sides.

The hospital said that it had halved its MRSA rates this year.

A spokesman added that matrons already had the power to call an emergency cleaning team or close a ward without referring to bureaucrats.

Leading the rebuttal for Labour was health secretary John Reid who said: "The Tories' only idea for tackling MRSA, allowing nurses to shut wards, has been slammed by nurses themselves.

"As Geraldine Cunningham, the director of clinical leadership at the Royal College of Nursing, says of their plans, 'It is much more complex than just closing a ward. Actually there are always patients in wards. If you moved them you would spread infection'."