Premier pops into home of elderly admirer for quick chat

On a scheduled visit to a Leeds health centre, Alice Thompson's doctor had told the Prime Minister she had wanted to meet him there but was not able to leave her home, a short distance away.

Accompanied by his wife Sarah, the Premier instead strolled up the path and knocked on the front door of her bungalow, in Yeadon, to be invited inside by the beaming pensioner.

"How wonderful to see you," she said. "I am so proud to meet you.

"I shall spread the word for you, don't you worry."

She told Mr Brown how she had been a dancer for the troops during the Second World War and had won medals.

The Prime Minister said he was proud to meet her, too, adding: "We were down at the health centre and they said you were here and we should come and see you, and I thought what a great idea."

After a 10-minute chat in the pensioner's living room, Mr Brown was introduced to her neighbours Edith and Alan Imrie, both also in their eighties.

They came to their door to meet the Prime Minister, with Mr Imrie telling him: "I hope you are successful. It's a privilege to meet you."

While unplanned, the visit tied in with the Prime Minister's "word of mouth" strategy for the election, concentrating on small, intimate chats with voters in battleground areas.

Yeadon is in a three-way marginal seat currently held by the Liberal Democrats.

The Prime Minister had earlier been visiting Yeadon Health Centre, talking to NHS staff and highlighting Labour's health plans. He encountered some resistance from a doctor to Labour plans to make

cancer diagnoses available from primary care centres.

Dr Andrew Wright said: "We would find it quite difficult to offer that kind of level of specialist service here.

"A lot of my colleagues would feel quite uncomfortable taking the responsibility of these diagnoses."

Asked by Mr Brown whether the answer was to get more specialists into centres like Yeadon, he said: "That might be possible.

"But you have got to think whether that is the best use of specialists' time."

He also insisted that Labour's promises on NHS treatment were "on the ballot paper" at this General Election as he sought to emphasise his dividing lines with the Tories on public services.

He tried to take on David Cameron over the "risk" the Conservative leader posed to the NHS, schools and policing.

Talking about Labour's pledges on access to GPs and getting cancer test results within a week, Mr Brown said: "The guarantees for the health service are an issue.

"They are going to be on the ballot paper, because we want to continue these guarantees, we want to step them up during the next Parliament.

"It's the way the health service shows it's individually helping the patient and it's a guarantee that can be enforced."

NI rise 'vital to protect services'

Yorkshire voters have grilled Gordon Brown over raising National Insurance, claiming it would cost businesses tens of thousands of pounds.

Mr Brown defended the policy, claiming that the economy will be enjoying three per cent growth by 2011 when the increase will come into force and that frontline public services in health, education and the police had to be protected.

Mr Brown said: "We have to start reducing the deficit that we inherited from the recession – that's why we are taking these tough and difficult decisions about public spending and tax."