Sports Calendar

The Conservative leader is not much warmer about Gordon Brown. Mr Howard pauses when asked whether he also considers that Mr Brown is a liar. “I don’t think I can summon up . . . I don’t make these charges wildly. I have not looked at anything in particular he has said. I cannot off-hand remember what he said about tax before 1997 or 2001.”

But can he be trusted, we asked? “That is a very different thing. I certainly don’t think he can be trusted with the economy. He is the man who has almost single-handedly destroyed our pensions system. The Government is largely responsible.”

Mr Howard is keen to rebut charges that the two main parties have come closer together on the main domestic policy issues. “There has been a convergence of language because Labour has borrowed our language in order to blur the differences between us. But we mean entirely different things.

“The fundamental philosophical difference between Labour and the Conservatives is that we believe in trusting the people. We believe you cannot deal with the public services by a top-down, target-driven approach. We believe you have to trust doctors, nurses, teachers, patients and parents to whom we would give real choice. You have to trust police officers too.”

He says the Tories would scrap a new rule requiring police officers to fill in a form and 40 questions every time someone is stopped. Health targets are “seriously counter- productive”. “We would scrap targets but put in at least as much money. We would scrap bureaucracy and get money to the front line. We would encourage the professions to use their judgment and consumers of those services to have real choice.”

On health, the Conservatives are offering real choice. “We say any NHS patients should have the choice of any NHS hospital. We would give that choice to the patient. When they say they will give choice they mean choice of four or five hospitals. It is not the patient but the primary care trust who exercies the choice.”

Similarly on schools, the Tories have said that they will find 600,000 more places over the lifetime of the next Parliament. That would enable 100,000 extra parents to have their first choice of school. “Labour talks about choice but it is diminishing and the current system is making it more difficult for children from underprivileged backgrounds to get a good education.”

As for the criticism that his campaign is all about Labour negatives rather than Conservative positives, he says that is “rubbish”. He says: “We set out how we will provide cleaner hospitals, how we will provide more police; we talk about the need for lower taxes and have spelt out — not as radically as many would have wanted us to do — the way we will cut taxes.

“I do not accept for one moment it is a negative message. That would be a justifiable charge if all we had done was mount criticisms of the current state of affairs. In every area where we have mounted the criticisms we have spelt out our remedy.

“I think there is everything to play for and I am confident we can win the election. I think it is very important we win it because of the things I have been saying and because I believe passionately the country is heading in the wrong direction.”

Mr Howard is for a moment stumped for an answer when we ask, if he wins, is he committed to staying on for the whole Parliament? “Um, I would guess so. It is up to the party to decide how long any leader stays. Touch wood I am very fit” — and off he dashes to Battersea heliport for more campaigning in Birmingham.

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth