Ministers hail fall in MRSA rates

The health secretary, John Reid, moved last night to check growing public concern over rates of MRSA infection in Britain's hospital system when he revealed that reforms introduced by the government are taking effect - and the rates are falling.

With health policy at the centre of the election campaign, the claim was immediately disputed by the Conservatives who have made MRSA a symbol of a costly and over-bureaucratised NHS.

Ministers will today unveil statistics which purport to show - unlike last week's suggestion that MRSA-related death rates are 20% up - that better hand hygiene, the use of "rapid swabs" to test new patients and other reforms in hospitals have started reducing infection rates, which have been rising in Britain for a decade.

Mr Reid welcomed figures expected from the Health Protection Agency to show that the infection rate is the lowest since mandatory records began in 2001. But Conservative campaign HQ challenged the data as selective and said: "If infection rates are going down - and that's debatable as they don't provide full annual figures - they have only decreased marginally given the huge list of ineffective initiatives launched by Labour."

Labour will this week use its scheduled "health week" to contrast its "patient's pathway" plans to speed up treatment with the Tory "passport". This would allow people who have waited too long to get private treatment and have up to 50% of the cost funded from the NHS. But yesterday Mr Reid used an interview on ITV's Dimbleby programme to insist that such arrangements are barred by the 1948 NHS Act and would require legislation to render the Tory plans legal.

"Any money that is paid towards an operation from NHS funds and health funds must not be supplemented by a charge on the patient from any other source. It is illegal under the 1948 regime, as amended in 1977, and the reason is this - the NHS was created to give all of us equal access to health care, equal access on the basis of our need our clinical need, not our ability to pay," he said.