Labour's high command today hit out at the Conservatives' new election promises on health, claiming they would "reverse the founding principle of the NHS" of free treatment at the point of delivery.
In a series of tit-for-tat Westminster press conferences that signalled election fever is well under way, Alan Milburn, the party's election coordinator and former health secretary, said the Tories wanted to "destroy" the NHS.
His presentation to journalists came within an hour of Michael Howard unveiling his proposals - which the Tory leader also explained in an article in today's Guardian - to subsidise the cost of 50% of private operations which come in more expensive than on the NHS and introduce ward matrons to ward off the hospital superbug MRSA.
Mr Milburn said: "The Tories denigrate the NHS because they want to destroy it. The NHS will never, ever be safe under the Tories.
"They propose to reverse the founding principle of the NHS: that it is about clinical need, not ability to pay."
The Labour press conference, which the Tories attempted to ambush with a "Groundhog Day" costume character outside, showed a mocked up till receipt, claiming that, under the Tories, a heart bypass would cost £10,000 and pensioner needing a knee operation would be charged over £6,000.
However, journalists queried the claim - also made by health minister John Hutton - that Mr Howard's proposal to subsidise private operations was effectively "a manifesto commitment to introduce charging for basic operations".
The Tory plan will enable patients who can afford to pay their half share of an operation to leapfrog NHS queues by going private, but does not in itself appear to impose extra charges for operations.
Labour, for its part, is offering a guaranteed minimum wait of four and a half months, and a choice, albeit limited, of operating hospitals.
The Labour minister for women Jacqui Smith also criticised the Tories' health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, for referring to patients who do not go private as a "burden on the NHS".
Labour claims that the £1.2bn estimated cost of subsidising private operations would undermine central funding of the health service and merely hand cash to patients who could afford to go private anyway.
Mr Hutton told reporters: "At best, the effect of their policy would be to divert public money from the NHS to subsidise those who can already afford to go private."
Mr Howard said that 250,000 people a year were now, despite having no medical insurance, opting to pay the full price of a private operation - three times the number when Labour came to power.
Mr Howard said average waiting time for operations had actually risen under Labour.
"If you give people real choice and you create extra capacity, that is the way to ensure waiting times come down," he said.
"Sure, they talk about choice. But, under Labour, choice, which is very limited, will be exercised by the primary care trusts, which are an organ of central government.
"Our policy is to ensure that the patients themselves, together with their GPs, exercise that choice."
Mr Lansley said the £1.2bn costing was based on everyone eligible for NHS treatment opting to go private. "It will almost certainly be less," he said.
"As people come back to the NHS, as we reduce waiting times, so the cost will come down."
At the press conference, Mr Milburn refused to answer questions about whether the firm that employed him during his time out of the cabinet, Bridgepoint - a private equity investment firm which recently bid for an organisation supplying agency nurses to NHS hospitals - would benefit from greater private provision within the NHS under the Tory proposals.
