Judgement day?

Tony Blair has said he should be personally judged on whether the government delivers real improvements in public services.

Speaking after a week dominated by the state of the NHS, Blair said he was willing to put his head on the block.

Rejecting claims that the health service was getting worse under his stewardship, he said hospitals would have "dramatically improved" by the time of the next general election.

"I am so confident of that, let me say this: If the NHS is not basically fixed by the next election, then I am quite happy to suffer the consequences," he told the Sunday People. "I am quite willing to be held to account by the voters if we fail."

High Risk

His high-risk intervention came as the row over NHS standards failed to die down.

As Labour sought to pick up the pieces following the Rose Addis affair, two senior hospital consultants broke ranks to describe the "appalling" conditions in their own hospital's accident and emergency unit.

Richard Collins and Bob Heddle of the Kent and Canterbury hospital described the conditions in the NHS trust as a "catastrophe waiting to happen".

They said they had personal knowledge of situations far worse than those experienced by Addis, the 92-year-old woman left in and accident and emergency unit for three days.

Despite the fall-out from the Addis scandal, the health secretary, Alan Milburn said on Sunday that the week had been a defining moment between the Tories and new Labour.

He said the clash had kicked off what he believed was "probably the most important debate in British politics".

"The fundamental issue in British politics is to get the public services right," Milburn told the BBC. "This really does count for people."

The Northern Ireland secretary, Dr John Reid, admitted that the Conservatives had landed a punch on the government over the Addis scandal, but argued that it would backfire on Iain Duncan Smith.

"They may have won the minutes, but we will win the hours," he told On the Record.

Duncan Smith said that evidence of deeper problems in many hospitals illustrated how the Addis saga was not an isolated incident.

He said many hospitals were "in chaos" as a result of undue interference from Whitehall. "This shows that the past week is not about one case," he said.