THE Conservative Party will "kill" the National Health Service if it wins an unprecedented fifth term, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats warned yesterday.
With just three days left to polling, both parties went on the offensive, attacking the Tories' record on health and claiming that the future of the NHS was now at stake. Announcing a list of "killer facts", the Labour leader, Mr Tony Blair, made no apology about his negative campaigning, insisting the danger to the NHS is acute.
"Brick by brick, they have been dismantling the foundations on which the NHS stands. If they win, they will have the licence to kill the NHS as we know it. They must be stopped. Unless the people of Britain use their vote on Thursday to send a Mayday warning, there will not be a National Health Service worth the name in five years' time," he warned.
According to his list of "killer facts", under the Tories waiting lists are at a record high, there are 50,000 fewer nurses on the wards yet almost 20,000 more senior managers, treatment now depended on where the patient lived or who their doctor was rather than need and administration costs had increased by a third.
Pledging that a Labour government would create a more efficient health service, Mr Blair promised the party would cut the redtape administration and bureaucracy costs.
Although the Liberal Democrats agreed with Labour that the service was in "crisis", the party leader, Mr Paddy Ashdown, rejected calls for tactical voting to oust the Tories. He admitted that a hung parliament was now "very unlikely" and dismissed media speculation that he might be offered a minor post in a Blair cabinet.
"I am inviting people to vote Liberal Democrat and that is the only way you get the things only we now stand for. Unhappily now, with Labour offering the same policies as the Conservatives, if Labour is elected it would not make any difference," he said.
Mr Blair also said he was not in favour of making pacts with other parties unless it was in the national interest. Asked whether he might bring the Liberal Democrats into his government or, if he had a large majority, if he would ride roughshod over them "probably more like Mrs Thatcher than anybody else", the Labour leader replied: "I'll try and treat that as a compliment."
In an appeal to disgruntled Tory voters, a senior Liberal Democrat spokesman, Mr Menzies Campbell, urged them to abandon the "recrimination" and "bitterness" rife in Mr Major's government and "come home" to them.
"There are millions of people who voted Conservative at the last election who are now disenchanted, disappointed and depressed by the broken promises and shabby sleaze of this government. Even before the election the conservative Party is falling to pieces, shattered by internal division. Recrimination is rife and bitterness overflows. These divisions will disable the Tory party for years to come."
The Liberal Democrat election campaign manager, Lord Holme, said there was evidence that Tory voters were switching to his party or were choosing to abstain rather than vote for a fifth term and predicted that a "significantly higher" number of Liberal Democrat MPs will be elected.
"I will simply say that in general we are getting extremely good support not only in our target seats but in other places where we didn't expect to do so well."