PM in pledge to beat hospital bugs

 

Press Assoc. - Sunday, September 23 06:02 am

 

Gordon Brown has set the stage for his first Labour Party conference as leader with a pledge that every hospital in the country will undergo a ward-by-ward "deep clean" in a bid to drive out superbugs from the NHS.

A buoyant Prime Minister arrived in Bournemouth on Saturday amid a swirl of speculation that he will capitalise on his opinion poll lead to call a snap general election this autumn.

 

That speculation was intensified by an ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror which put Labour on 39%, six points ahead of the Tories on 33%, with the Liberal Democrats on 19%.

 

The findings suggest that Labour has emerged from the Northern Rock crisis with its reputation for economic competence intact.

 

Chancellor Alistair Darling will tell the conference that through its "strength of purpose" the Government has built "one of the strongest economies in the world".

 

The confidence coursing through the party was graphically illustrated by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who suggested that it was now looking forward to a second decade in power.

 

"We didn't solve all the problems of the world in 10 years in government. Well, this is a party that is planning how it is going to use the next 10 years to go further towards solving them," he told The Observer.

 

The Prime Minister refused to be drawn on whether he intended to go to the country this autumn, telling The Sunday Times: "My focus is and will remain on the work that needs to be done".

 

He was, however, swift to launch his first policy initiative, promising that over the next 12 months all hospitals would be restored to a pristine state of cleanliness to rid them of MRSA and C-difficile.

 

Officials said that it would be up to individual NHS trusts to decide how the cleaning programme was implemented. However, it is thought wards could be closed for a week at a time while they are systematically cleansed.