UK's Brown vows more cancer care as race heats up

(AP) — You know an election is coming when British politicians suddenly promise sweeping improvements to the National Health Service, a simultaneous source of national pride and worry.

Britons are proud of their free, universal medical care, but worry that long waiting lists and underfunded hospitals can damage their prospects should they fall ill.

Enter Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who announced plans Monday to provide home care and personalized nursing for cancer sufferers, a program he said could help about 1.6 million patients in the next five years.

"These bold plans for reform will be part of our ambition to create an NHS which focuses far more on prevention and early intervention, on keeping people healthy," Brown said.

The prime minister said the program could be funded by more than 2 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) the NHS could save by managing long-term conditions better and reducing the number of hospital admissions for acute conditions.

The Conservative Party's health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, accused Brown of grandstanding.

"Yet again Gordon Brown is making promises on the NHS which he knows he cannot keep," Lansley said. "He says that he will provide cancer sufferers with their own specialist nurse, but the extra money he is providing would only represent 30 minutes of a nurse's time per patient per year."

Brown's cancer announcement comes at a promising juncture in his re-election campaign. Long far behind in opinion surveys, he has been edging up, raising the possibility that the election may be closer than expected.

It is a curious (and nasty) pre-campaign campaign: No election date has been set — the vote must be held by June 3, with most insiders predicting early May.

Both party leaders are starting to act very much like candidates, with Conservative chief David Cameron on Monday launching a blistering, personal attack on Brown.

There are indications that Brown — often criticized for his dronish public pronouncements — intends to soften his image as the vote approaches, in part by talking about family matters, something he has done only rarely in the past.

A spokesman for Brown, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with policy, acknowledged that the leader had "welled up," and had "tears in his eyes," as he recorded a taped television interview Saturday with celebrity journalist Piers Morgan. In the interview, to be broadcast this weekend, Brown discussed the loss of his daughter, Jennifer, who died in 2002 less than two weeks after her premature birth. He also discusses the severe health crisis faced by one of his sons, who has cystic fibrosis.

Cameron, fighting back against the worries of some backers that his campaign has stalled, Monday launched his most personal attack on Brown, accusing him of fostering a culture of corruption in Parliament during the Labour Party's long reign, which started with Tony Blair's landslide victory in 1997.

He said Brown's regime had led to a collapse of public trust, citing the lingering parliamentary expense account scandal and other matters. A number of legislators have been forced to repay inflated expense account claims, and four face criminal charges.

"How Gordon Brown can claim to be a reformer with a straight face I just don't know," Cameron said. "He can't reform the institution because he is the institution: he made it."