In excellent health

For the last couple of years, Labour have been desperately trying to shift the focus onto health and education - and then the Tories go and do it for them with their Margaret Dixon stunt.

We can all understand Mrs Dixon's anger at having her operation postponed - indeed, the prime minister said it was unacceptable - but the blatant delight displayed by the Tories at having dug out this case will, I predict, be shortlived. That's because people not only trust Labour more than the Tories on health, but they've also started to believe that the NHS is really getting better.

Here's one random piece of evidence to prove my case: last week, I was with my long-suffering husband on a remote Burnley estate, trudging through the snow to stick leaflets with my face on them through letterboxes. It's our favourite pastime at the moment. My husband, by the way, always makes sure that the corner of the leaflet with my mugshot on it is the first part to go through a letterbox if he can hear a dog waiting on the other side.

As I was slipping and sliding back down somebody's drive, a middle-aged man I had never met before came up and asked me whether I was this Kitty person. I confirmed my identity with some trepidation - anything could follow.

But what he said, unprompted, was this: "That Michael Howard is lying about the NHS. It's brilliant. My wife was diagnosed with cancer last year, and she was straight in to have the operation. Now she's at home, as right as rain. He's trying to scare us - but it's just not true. People need to vote Labour."

Unfortunately, he then waved cheerily and vanished before I managed to sign him up for everything I could think of, from joining the party to taking a starring role in our next national TV party political broadcast.

The point is this - a few years ago, although people were prepared to acknowledge that their own experience of the NHS was good, they did not believe changes for the better were widespread. Now they are beginning to believe the good service they and their loved ones have received is part of a wider picture. And they would never trust the Tories to do a better job.

On the doorstep in Burnley, people are accepting that things are happening. They know the town's hospital is being extended and modernised, and that a new health centre is being built. And they believe it when you say there are more doctors and nurses, that health funding has risen dramatically, and that waiting lists have fallen. They tell me they've been offered a chance to have their non-urgent operation done in a neighbouring hospital rather than remain on the waiting list for longer.

They aren't sure what these changes mean, or how they are happening ("Who's paying for my operation if it's not in Burnley?" one woman asked me). But they acknowledge that something is going on, and it's something that will help them.

Meanwhile, the basic statistics are improving. Death rates from cancer and coronary heart disease have fallen in Burnley since 1997, the latter quite dramatically. Nobody waits for more than two days for a GP appointment. Waiting times in accident and emergency have fallen, with 94% of people waiting for less than four hours - although strangely enough, this didn't prevent my Lib Dem opponent from complaining bitterly about the wait when he got part of his finger bitten off by a dog when posting one of his leaflets through a letterbox.

The exception is dentists - you can't find an NHS one for love or money. But improvements will soon be seen: the local primary care trust - with government cash - is now working to recruit more NHS dentists and find premises for them to work in.

So the Tories can bleat, scare and rejoice in failure all they like - but, as we are concerned, the examples they're trying to promote seem very much the exception rather than the rule.

· Kitty Ussher is Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for Burnley