Labour today tried to shift the pre-election spotlight onto health, as the prime minister opened a new hospital, and the goverment announced pilot schemes to train nurses in minor surgery would be expanded.

Seeking to capitalise on the party's lead on health - the Guardian's poll this week showed Labour had a 13% lead over the Conservatives on the issue, despite the media firestorm of the Margaret Dixon affair - Mr Blair unveiled a new £38m community hospital in London.

Accompanied by the health secretary, John Reid, the prime minister praised the rolling-out of a training scheme to allow nurses to perform small operations under supervision, saying that it would realise the "enormous untapped wealth of experience" in the health service.

Mr Blair made his announcement at the new Edgware Community Hospital in Middlesex, which includes a walk-in centre staffed by nurse practitioners open from 8am to 10pm, and an X-ray and an ultrasound department open as late as 10pm. There is also a midwife-led home-from-home birth centre.

He told staff there that the NHS "is well on the road to being redeemed as the great national institution that was created some 60 years ago. It has a very special place in the hearts of the British people and always should have - and as far as I am concerned, always will have."

Labour strategists hope that the focus on investment and reform in the NHS will contrast sharply with what they claim is the Tories' "negative" pre-election campaign.

Earlier this month the Tories made a rare venture onto traditional Labour ground, highlighting the case of Warrington pensioner Margaret Dixon. They said an operation to Mrs Dixon's shoulder - potentially fatal because of her other medical complaints - had been postponed seven times.

Mrs Dixon's husband and daughter appeared on a press conference platform with the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, to highlight her case. Although insisting that they were not party political, or even Tory supporters, they did not deny that the Conservatives had paid their travel expenses.

Mrs Dixon has now had her operation.