The beleaguered National Health Service is to get thousands more nurses and doctors as a result of the extra �40bn of investment over the next five years.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn said that as well as 35,000 more nurses and 15,000 more doctors, 500 primary care centres and 40 new hospitals would be built for the NHS.

NHS shopping list

15,000 more doctors 35,000 more nurses 500 new primary care centres 40 new hospitals

On Thursday Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown sought to sell to voters the 1p rise in National Insurance (NI) announced in the Budget and that will be levied to pay for improvements.

But on a hospital visit in central London the two politicians were accused by NHS consultant Peta Longstaff of scoring an "own goal" by raising tax for low-paid doctors and nurses.

That was a point seized upon by Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith who pointed out that as Europe's biggest employer, the NHS was itself faced with paying vastly increased NI contributions.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy meanwhile welcomed the rise in tax but said "for many patients it has come anything up to five years too late".

Dr Longstaff took the chancellor and prime minister to task

Mr Milburn's NHS reform measures included new financial incentives for hospital performance, more managerial freedom for top performing hospitals and trusts and reform of social services care for the elderly.

Shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox agreed there had to reform but warned the government was not about to be handed a "blank cheque".

The Tories have attacked Labour for breaking their pledge not to raise income tax.

But Mr Brown told Dr Longstaff: "The tax is done in a fair way. I would not have asked for a tax rise unless it was absolutely necessary."

Political gamble

And he insisted that Labour had kept all its promises on tax.

"It is a complete falsehood to suggest that we have not," he said.

Ministers are aware that they are taking a gamble politically and if patients do not see improvements in the NHS then there may well be an electoral price to pay.

Mr Blair was at pains to point out in a speech to doctors that improvements would take time.

Effect of tax increases

Average income (�21,400): Up �3.70 a week Above average earnings (�32,100): Up �5.75 a week Below average earnings (�10,700): Up �1.65 a week

Dr Fox dismissed Mr Milburn's statement as "waffle".

But Mr Duncan Smith said that the government had failed to look at alternative ways of delivering healthcare.

"Health services everywhere else in the world spend more on their citizens," he said.

"The key question here is why do they get more out of what they spend."

Meanwhile Mr Kennedy said Labour's admission that tax rises were needed changed the "contours of politics in a more honest and transparent fashion".

Iain Duncan Smith: Labour offering no change, no difference
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In his Budget, Mr Brown said NHS funding would rise by an average of 7.4% in real terms each year, increasing from �65.4bn this year to �105.6bn in 2007/08.

It means UK health spending will increase from 6.7% of domestic economic output in 1997 to 9.4% by 2007/08, compared with a current European Union average of 8%.

Helping families was another target of the Budget and Home Secretary David Blunkett has given more details of how that money will be spent.

The National Family and Parenting Institute will receive a �2m grant over the next three years to look at the problems facing "dysfunctional families", Mr Blunkett announced.