Brown 'has scored own goal'

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown today set out to sell their tax-raising Budget - only to hit trouble when a senior health service doctor accused the Chancellor to his face of scoring a massive "own goal".

Accident and emergency consultant Peta Longstaff challenged Mr Blair and Mr Brown when they visited the showpiece

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to trumpet their promise of £40 billion extra for the NHS over the next five years.

At a question and answer session she pointed out that the health service was the biggest employer in the country, with many staff, from nurses to hospital porters, still poorly paid.

And she demanded: "How does that fit with putting National Insurance contributionsup? It sounds a bit of an own goal." Her question appeared to put both Mr Brown and Mr Blair, sitting alongside each other, on the defensive.

The Chancellor replied: "I would not have asked people to pay more tax unless it was absolutely necessary. The tax is done in a fair way. I wouldn't have asked for a tax rise either unless I was convinced it would be properly used."

Mr Blair, sounding conciliatory told her: "Yesterday was a hard choice to make - for the Government and for the people who have to pay more." But he reaffirmed that the NHS did need more resources and that this could not come free.

The encounter, in front of the TV cameras, was nowhere near as aggressive as Mr Blair's famous confrontation on health in the run-up to the last election, when Sharron Storer protested to the Prime Minister at the treatment available for her partner, suffering from leukaemia.

But it took the shine off the high-profile effort to win hearts and minds for yesterday's Budget pain. And it served as an early warning that Mr Brown's promise of a golden future for the health service has yet to convince those at the heart of the system.

At the same time, it emerged that the NHS and local government are facing extra costs of well over half a billion pounds a year as a result of Mr Brown's increase in employers' National Insurance contributions.

The cost to the health service, with a workforce of 1.1 million, was today given as an extra £200 million next year, with the total set to rise sharply as the NHS takes on more staff. The bill for local councils, which employ 2.5 million, including teachers and police, is reckoned at an additional £300 million a year.

The Local Government Employers Organisation signalled that it intends to ask the Chancellor for extra funding to meet the higher costs. But there is also a threat that the burden will feed through in increased council taxes.

Afterwards Dr Longstaff, who has been at the Chelsea and Westminster for five years and a consultant for 15, gave every impression that she had not set out to ambush Messrs Brown and Blair with a hostile question.

But on the other hand it was equally clear that people on the frontline of the NHS were taking nothing for granted - and in particular, nothing that the Government said was going to be taken at face value.