Only 50 hospitals have so far been 'deep cleaned' to prevent superbug infections

Only 50 hospitals have so far been 'deep cleaned' to prevent superbug infections ahead of a March deadline, a minister admitted yesterday.

Gordon Brown pledged at the Labour party conference last September that every single hospital in England will have completed the process by the end of March.

But yesterday Health Secretary Alan Johnson admitted that only 50 hospitals had so far had the cleaning treatment.

There was confusion over whether Mr Johnson was referring to individual hospitals, of which there are 1,500 across England, or hospital trusts, of which there are 170.

The Tories said he was admitting that only 50 out of 1,500 hospitals had been deep cleaned - just three per cent of the total.

But last night the Department of Health claimed he was talking about hospital trusts. This would mean that deep cleans had happened in fewer than a third of trusts, still indicating that the programme was well behind schedule.

Senior doctors have lambasted the deep clean programme as a gimmick, saying it will have no impact on the spread of superbugs.

Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4's World at One that he did not keep a 'running total' on how many hospitals had started deep cleans, but insisted he was confident the deadline would be met.

"As far as I am aware the process is well under way," he said. "We expected every hospital to have carried out the deep clean by the end of March."

He added: "Roughly we are into the first 50 so far."

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Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: "We have had one piece of spin after another from Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson over their 'deep cleaning programme'.

"Now we find that fewer than 50 hospitals have actually had one. On top of this, we know that money is being taken from local NHS trusts to pay for it. This is outrageous.

"Local NHS trusts should not be forced to waste money that could be used to provide better treatment for local patients on a programme that the Government can't seem to manage.

"Infections are a major problem in our hospitals. Gordon Brown's gimmicks won't solve this. We need a proper strategy to root out infections through screening when people are admitted to hospital and then isolating those who are infected."

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: "With the whole programme running well behind schedule, this is yet another failure by the Government to deal effectively with this enormous problem."

The first trust to receive a deep clean was Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, where 270 patients died from the superbug C. diff as a result of appalling hygiene standards.