Today Gordon Brown was getting heckled by the mother of a cystic fibrosis patient over the removal of free TV sets from a PFI hospital ward. Linda Smith was held back by police at the entrance to the Heartlands Hospital, in Birmingham but was later allowed to enter the building and had a five-minute talk with the chancellor.
Mrs Smith, 56, complained to the chancellor that it was not right for children on the ward for hours on end to have nothing to amuse them “Children spend their last weeks and months of their lives on that ward… They can’t go out because of the risk of infection. The fact that they have pulled the plug is criminal.”