Margaret Dixon

Amid a continuing row over the health service's treatment of pensioner Margaret Dixon, John Reid has accused Michael Howard of making "distasteful" comments.

The health secretary made his accusation at the end of a day that had seen the case of Mrs Dixon, whose NHS operation was said to have been cancelled seven times, dominating the news headlines.

On Thursday morning, the Conservative leader said the case showed the government is failing ordinary families.

The accusations threatened to leave the government on the back foot over the standard of hospital care.

But following a visit to the Warrington hospital at the centre of the storm, Reid emerged to insist he was happy to battle with the Conservatives over the future of the NHS.

"I came here today because I had been contacted by staff and by patients who were angry at what they had heard yesterday from Michael Howard," said the Cabinet minister.

Reid said NHS workers had described the Tory leader's comments as "distasteful".

"I fully accept...that things sometimes go wrong," he told reporters.

"I don't know whether they went wrong in this case, the case of Mrs Dixon, but I'm sure the hospital management will go through the chronology of what happened and it seems it isn't quite as Mr Howard made out in the first instance."

Reid said he was prepared to meet Mrs Dixon, but would not take part in a "political stunt" orchestrated by Conservative press officers.

Wasted cash

Earlier in the day, Howard said he had "lost count of the times doctors and nurses have told me money isn’t getting through to the frontline".

With Mrs Dixon's case featuring prominently in Thursday's newspapers, the Tories sought to press home the issue by holding a press conference with her husband and daughter.

At a London media event, Howard described the Dixons as "a family that’s worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes and depended on our National Health Service".

"Like all of us, their concern is not about the dedicated and caring doctors and nurses who work so hard for our NHS. It's about the system – a system that has let their family down," he said.

"Cancelled operations cause trauma not just to the patients – but to their families, as well as to the doctors and nurses involved.

"The problem we face is that so much of the money Mr Blair has spent on the NHS has been wasted on bureaucracy.

"That's why families like the Dixons are not getting value for money."

Political pawns

Mrs Dixon's daughter, Lindsay, dismissed claims that her family was being used as a political pawn.

Referring to a letter she sent to the health secretary this January, she added: "We asked John Reid to help us and we have had no reply. Michael Howard has helped us."

Howard also said it was "absolute rubbish" to suggest he was exploiting the family for political gain.

But the prime minister's official spokesman said: "It is wrong to elevate one case into a generalisation about the health service."

And Liberal Democrat health spokesman Paul Burstow said it "can never be right to trade a person's medical records across the Despatch Box to score a party political point".

"The losers in this game are patients who at short notice find their operation cancelled, or who pick up an infection because of the rush to use the bed again," he added.

Family trauma

Speaking to GMTV, Mrs Dixon said the odds of her surviving the surgery were 70-30 against, leading to "traumatic" conversations with her family before each cancelled operation.

She said "the management of the NHS in general" was at fault for her experiences.

"I do believe that money is handed to the individual hospitals by central government, but it is dictated by central government, where they must spend their money.

She added: "I feel very strongly that the money should be given to the hospitals. The management, consultants and all the medical staff involved should make their own minds up and decide where that money should be spent."

Lindsay Dixon told the press conference she was pleased that her mother now has a date scheduled for surgery. But she added: "I am not holding my breath. Nothing is set in stone."

Father and daughter then travelled to Downing Street to hand deliver a letter urging the government to take action.

"This is not a game," the letter said. "This is first and foremost about getting my mum and my wife an operation to give her some quality of life."