Brown pledges personal care 'revolution'
Updated on 08 February 2010
Gordon Brown has been trying to turn the focus away from the MPs'
expenses scandal with a series of promises to improve the NHS, including
one-to-one health care for all cancer patients.
Mr Brown said "take it or leave it" public services were not good enough. In a speech to the Kings Fund, the prime minister instead pledged to give people more choice, and more control over their own care.
The plan will cost £100m over the next five years - mainly to pay for extra specialist care nurses - and the Conservatives have questioned how it will all be funded.
But Labour insist that providing better home support for the elderly, and those with cancer and other long term conditions, could save the health service more than two billion pounds, as well as improving the lives of millions of people.
As he toured a community care centre to see the services already on offer for elderly people, Mr Brown won over some fans who said he was much "warmer" in person than he appeared on television.
But there was no escape from the expenses issue as the Labour party announced the three Labour MPs who have been charged with false accounting had been suspended from the party.
David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine have already been banned from standing as Labour candidates in future. Now they will lose the party whip in Parliament.
