Hospitals which fail superbug test will be named and shamed

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Inspectors will arrive unannounced to carry out spot checks on 120 NHS trusts in England over the next year.

Those that are not up to scratch could find themselves served with a humiliating "improvement notice".

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Hospitals which fail to tackle superbugs will be named, shamed and forced to improve

If they fail to comply with this, the Health Secretary could personally intervene to make sure infection rates are cut.

The crackdown by the Healthcare Commission comes after figures showed rates of the infection Clostridium Difficile are rising.

Official statistics identified 55,681 cases of the potentially fatal bug in patients aged 65 and over in England in 2006, up 8 per cent compared with 2005.

There were 1,542 cases of MRSA between October and December of 2006, a fall of 7 per cent on the previous three months.

Despite the fall, the Government is widely expected to miss its target of halving rates of MRSA before next April.

Trusts will be assessed against the Government's "hygiene code", which lists 11 compulsory duties, such as hand-washing and cleaning equipment, designed to prevent superbugs.

Trusts which breach the code will have to take steps to fix the problems.

If these measures are judged to have failed, they will be publicly issued with an improvement notice.

Failure to comply with such a notice could end up with the Health Secretary imposing special measures and personally overseeing improvements.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley welcomed the checks but questioned why it has taken ten years to introduce them.