Paxman guns for Kennedy over Iraq and tax

Charles Kennedy said a Liberal Democrat government would withdraw troops from Iraq regardless of the security situation.

The party leader said he would "not be bound" by the Iraqi administration over how long British forces should remain.

He was speaking during an ill-tempered interview with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman.

Mr Kennedy, who has made his opposition to the war the centrepiece of his election campaign, said he wanted British troops to leave Iraq by the end of the year.

Asked whether he would withdraw soldiers if the Iraqis requested that they remain, he said: "We are not bound by what the Iraqi government does."

Mr Kennedy, still looking tired following the birth of his son Donald last week, was thrown on the defensive over plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax.

Questioned repeatedly by Paxman on the subject, the Lib-Dem leader admitted that two key workers living together, such as a nurse and a fireman, would be worse off under his party's plans.

When it was put to him that such a couple would be £429 a year poorer, he said: "You've got to pitch this in the overall totality of what you're trying to achieve with the local income tax. If you take pensioners, for example: six million pensioners are going to be taken out of local taxation altogether.

"Now, you can say to me, here's one set of financial losers, and you're correct. I can say, there's one set of financial gainers." Looking ill-at-ease and stumbling over some of his words, Mr Kennedy accepted that a fireman and a nurse "were not wealthy".

Mr Paxman asked: "We've looked at your top seven target seats and in every one of them people will be worse off if they were living in a Band D house, that couple, a nurse and a fireman." Mr Kennedy said: "Inevitably, we're not pretending this, we're saying a quarter of all council-tax payers will find themselves paying more. We're not hiding behind that."

Mr Kennedy was also involved in a tetchy exchange over his lifestyle. Asked if his doctor was "happy" about how much he drank and smoked, he said: "My doctor is actually rather approving. He would like to see me not smoke at all, but it has drastically come down since the turn of the year, and I'm determined it's going to be phased out altogether, particularly with the arrival of the new one."

The Lib-Dem campaign today focused on health, with Mr Kennedy promising £350million to end the scandal of "hidden" NHS waiting lists. He pledged to use "private or public" healthcare to speed up diagnostic waiting times.

"At present, the Government only measures the time taken from when you are diagnosed with an illness until you are treated," he said.

"These targeted waiting times are indeed being reduced. But those on the hidden waiting lists - those waiting for tests and scans to find out what is wrong with them - have seen no action."