EMERGING at last from the cataleptic condition they were pummelled into at the election, the Tories land an opportunistic blow on New Labour today on an increasingly tender spot - the NHS.

For having witnessed the government's smarting over the lengthening hospital waiting lists that it pledged to cut, they follow-up with a survey that claims that the number of hospitals threatened with closure or cuts has passed the hundred-mark for the first time since the election.

It is a below-the-belt blow, the government says.

The list is riddled with inaccuracies and, besides, they are investing in the biggest new hospital building programme in the history of the NHS, they say.

This, of course, is the cut and thrust of politics, but, in it, the government may be sufficiently scarred for its hitherto-invulnerable sure-touch image to suffer quite badly.

For no matter how much this Tory list might be exaggerated by assumptions that proposed and potentially money-saving mergers of NHS trusts mean hospital closures or cutbacks, it contains enough accuracy to inflict a telling sting. That is because, while the Conservatives may conveniently ignore the new hospitals being built - fair game for an opposition party out for scoring points - they are homing in on a trend voters do not like, that of centralisation of hospital services.

The underlying pattern of patients having to travel further and elsewhere for treatment is one upon which the Tories are seizing, in the knowledge that it conflicts with local loyalties and what people want.

The demands placed on resources will always be finite no matter how much they are improved so, as a result, the NHS is constantly vulnerable to crisis.

The Tories, therefore, need only to continue to sow surveys on "cuts" to expose Labour's weak point.

And because health care is a matter close to people's hearts, it is the sort of damage that sinks in - enough for an alert opposition to exploit it to wipe away some of Labour's gloss.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.