The Conservative leader, Michael Howard, today put the hospital "superbug" MRSA in his sights, as the pre-parliamentary sparring between he and Tony Blair continued.
After both he and the prime minister concentrated on crime earlier in the week, today Mr Howard visited a hospital in Kent to vow to tackle the spread of the killer infection, which he labelled "the new British disease".
The attack has particular poignancy because the mother of Mr Howard's wife, Sandra, died of a hospital infection after being treated for a broken rib.
Comparing infection rates with continental European countries, the Tory leader vowed to scrap targets which he said were diverting attention from the bug, but also to create statistical league tables of infection rates for every hospital and department.
He said: "The new British disease is the superbug in our hospitals, which it is estimated kills at least 5,000 people a year.
"Hospitals are supposed to cure you, not kill you. Why isn't there a national outcry? Where's the government's sense of urgency?"
Mr Howard, on a day-long trip around Kent, compared the MRSA crisis with the "pea-souper" fog of 1952, which led to the clean air act, and claimed there was a lack of government action now.
He said: "The next Conservative government will therefore make ridding our hospitals of the superbug a key priority. Patients deserve, and patients will get, clean and safe hospitals."
And he joked that "Labour have launched 20 initiatives in the last four years - initiatives designed to catch headlines. Yet more and more patients go on catching MRSA."
If the current shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, becomes health secretary after the next election, Mr Howard said he would have three priorities: scrapping Labour's "plethora" of targets, providing patients with department-by-department information on infection rates, and the more general Tory policy of allowing the sick to choose any hospital in which to be treated.
The Tory leader, in his home county of Kent, was also visiting Deal Town Hall, a local estate and Kent International Airport, accompanied by prospective Tory parliamentary candidates.
They include Mark MacGregor, the party's former chief executive, who was embroiled in the "Betsygate" saga as one of the complainants against former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith's wife. He is now standing for Jonathon Aitken's old seat of Thanet South.
Under plans unveiled by the National Patient Safety Agency yesterday, alcohol rubs are to be put beside every hospital bed. The move is aimed at saving 450 lives and £140m a year by encouraging hospital staff to clean their hands as often as possible.
Mr Howard welcomed the move, but said it was hardly "rocket science".
Some 100,000 patients a year are hit by hospital-acquired infections in England alone, and 5,000 die as a result.
MRSA, or methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, first appeared in the 1960s but has reached epidemic levels in the past few years.
Some strains of the bug are resistant to almost all known antibiotics and the NHS spends an estimated £1bn a year fighting it.
Other moves designed to tackle its spread include "patient power", the supervision of cleaners by ward sisters or matrons, new hospitals and experts from abroad.
The Liberal Democrats' health spokesman, Paul Burstow, described the Tory plans as "rhetoric and hot air".
"It is highly surprising that the Tories have just woken up to the seriousness of this issue," he said.
"It is depressing that they have come up with no new solutions to deal with infection."
