Prime minister pledges an increase in spending on frontline services

Gordon Brown won two standing ovations from delegates at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) annual conference after a highly personal speech lauding them as “angels dressed as nurses” and offering a commitment to increase spending on frontline services.

The prime minister painted Labour as the only party able to protect the health service – and pointed out that since 1997 the health service has employed 80,000 more nurses, “the greatest force of compassion that our country has ever seen”.

Labour’s health manifesto, released this morning, reiterated the party’s plan for the “NHS in your home”. This translates as more care for cancer patients at home, more dialysis and chemotherapy delivered out of hospitals, and an attempt to dovetail health and social care provision for the elderly.

Brown also made his clearest pledge yet that the planned increase in national insurance next year is to protect the NHS – putting clear water between Labour and the Conservatives. There was loud applause in the hall when the prime minister told nurses: “Your pensions are safe with us. We don’t believe a pay freeze is the way to a better NHS.”

There has been anger with Tory proposals that would cap public sector pensions and impose a freeze pay for all except those earning less than £18,000.

He said that Britain was at the “heart of advanced medicine” pointing out that Labour had created the biggest cancer research centre in the world in St Pancras with a billion pounds of investment.

“We have research in Glasgow looking at using stem cells to repair the human brain… We will see the next stage of X-rays being developed here,” he said.

Brown quoted the poet William Blake and the lyrics of a song by Lesley Garrett to win over a potentially hostile audience, many of whom had been incensed by cuts imposed by their local trusts.

The Labour leader said the public loved the NHS and its nurses. He spoke of his gratitude for the “tender care” he and his own family had received at its hands.

Although he he had been fortunate to have enjoyed a “life free of ill-health”, he was grateful for the “selflessness” of the nursing profession when his daughter, Jennifer Jane, died at 10 days old after being born prematurely.

The Browns’ youngest son, Fraser, was later diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. With his wife Sarah watching, Brown told delegates at the Bournemouth conference: “We know what you and the NHS achieved for us when our son had to undergo treatment and when our daughter was born prematurely and was with us for all too short a time.

“So we feel like parents who have been in the presence of angels dressed in nurses’ uniforms, performing the most amazing works of mercy and care, and I will never forget seeing in real time, every minute of the day, that idea of service and selflessness.

“I am here with Sarah to say not just thank you from our family, but thank you from millions upon millions of families.”

In a press conference after the speech Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the RCN, said Brown was in the dark over cuts in the NHS.

“People at the centre generally don’t seem to know what’s happening,” he said, adding that it was frontline staff such as nurses who did know.

“While we are not politically aligned, I genuinely believe that Gordon Brown is a man of honesty and integrity,” he went on, adding that Labour had tripled investment in the NHS. “But they don’t seem to be understanding exactly what’s happening on the ground in many areas.”