THE election campaign has today been put on hold as a mark of respect to the Pope. All three main party leaders were this morning in Rome for the Pontiff's funeral.

It marked the start of a 48-hour lull in the campaign, with tomorrow's royal wedding extending the truce.

But the campaign will restart on Sunday with a relentless four-week slog up to the May 5 polling day.

The pause comes after a new poll indicated Labour and the Tories were almost neck and neck.

The YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph puts Labour on 36 per cent and the Conservatives on 35 per cent. The Liberal Democrats are on 21 per cent.

Yesterday Tory leader Michael Howard unveiled a £52million ten point action plan to tackle the MRSA hospital superbug.

The plan, dubbed the 'matron's budget' would put matrons in charge of deciding whether to close an infected ward and would also mean all wards having access to 24-hour cleaning and increased hygiene. Mr Howard, whose mother-in-law died from a hospital acquired infection, launched his plan after visiting a hospital in Tooting, south London, yesterday.

Earlier the three main parties had clashed over how to tackle superbugs when quizzed by doctors, policy-makers and patients during their meeting at the King's Fund think-tank in London.

Health Minister John Hutton argued that, sometimes, moving patients around a hospital because a ward was closed was not necessarily the best way to stop the spread of infection.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Paul Burstow said compulsory training on infection control was needed.