A WORSENING row over a woman’s cancelled shoulder operation galvanised the pre-election campaign yesterday and thrust the NHS to the top of the political agenda.

As Labour and the Conservatives unleashed a torrent of claims and counter-claims over the treatment of Margaret Dixon, John Reid, the Health Secretary, dashed north to visit the hospital at the centre of the row at the same time as Mrs Dixon’s family were taking part in a Tory press conference in London.

The day descended into farcical scenes outside her home in Cheshire, with at least one Tory spin-doctor inside and a media pack outside.

The case of Mrs Dixon, a 69-year-old pensioner from Penketh, who says that her operation has been cancelled seven times, was first raised by Michael Howard in the Commons on Wednesday as a symbol of NHS failure and waste.

Mr Reid sought yesterday to turn the tables after talking to patients and staff at Warrington General Hospital who, he said, were angry over the Conservatives’ political use of Mrs Dixon’s plight. The Health Secretary did not meet Mrs Dixon after discovering that he had been invited by Tory press officers who were at her home throughout yesterday “handling media inquiries”.

Mrs Dixon denied that she felt like a political football, saying: “I cannot feel any kicks yet.” But when scuffles almost broke out between rival crews from the BBC and Granada, Chris Davenport, one of two Conservative Party officials, stepped in to tell them: “The only person whose interests we are concerned about are Margaret’s. If you are going to have a fight in the living room, I am going to rip your cables out.”

Mr Reid said Mrs Dixon’s operation had been cancelled because the high-dependency beds at the hospital were occupied by patients with a fractured skull, fractured spine, throat cancer and pneumonia.

“While I have a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Dixon . . . I think it is right that priority is given on grounds of clinical need and decisions made by doctors and not by political intervention.”

Ian Dalton, chief executive of North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust, disputed the details of Mrs Dixon’s account of the case. He said that her operation had been cancelled on three occasions, not seven, although he conceded that during an eight-day stay at the hospital in November her treatment had been unsuccessfully rescheduled five times. While Mrs Dixon has now been offered a slot in the week starting March 21, the trust cannot “absolutely guarantee” that she will have her operation even then.

Mr Howard had poured cups of tea for Mrs Dixon’s husband and daughter at a carefully-staged meeting in his London home before appearing alongside the family at a press conference to lambast NHS bureaucracy. The Tory leader said that Mrs Dixon had been “let down” by a system which devoted too much money to bureaucracy and allowed central government targets to override local clinicians’ priorities.

“Yesterday, Tony Blair suggested that theirs was an isolated case,” said Mr Howard. “But last year there were 67,000 cancelled operations — 10,000 more than there were in 1999.”

The Prime Minister had told the Commons on Wednesday: “Of course there are cases, exceptional cases I believe, in which operations are cancelled or patients aren’t well treated. It is an absolute calumny on the NHS to say that that is the rule. The rule is people are treated excellently in our NHS.”

Mrs Dixon broke her arm in an accident but because she suffers from osteoarthritis a complicated operation to rebuild her shoulder is needed. Her weak heart, together with lung and kidney problems, means it carries a greater-than-usual risk. She was told that she had only a 30-70 per cent chance of surviving surgery. Mr Howard said that she had a 50:50 chance.

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