Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg visited Kingston Hospital today to shore up his Liberal Democrat colleague Edward Davey's nascent election campaign.

Mr Clegg has positioned his party as the sensible choice between the Conservatives and Labour, particularly on the NHS, which he said the Lib Dems would fund in line with growth in the economy.

He criticised the Tories' "ideologically extreme assertion that they want to carry on cutting, cutting money for public services" and added: "Labour can't commit to this - they would still be spending a lot of extra money on interest payments [on the nation's financial shortfall].

"We have struck the right balance."

An extra £2bn was promised by Chancellor George Osborne in last year's autumn statement, which Mr Davey said his party "pushed for" behind the scenes.

However, hospitals in south-west London must find hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of savings due to national cuts, and Kingston Hospital's chief executive Kate Grimes said her team was "struggling" to pare back what she called an already highly-efficient service.

An extra billion or two may seem dwarfed by the overall NHS budget - more than £90bn - but Ms Grimes believes even that amount could be vital if some trickles down to her hospital.

She said: "If we can get a proportion of that it will make a really big difference. Next year we are required to make a 3.8 per cent efficiency which is about nearly £10m. We're really struggling to find that.

"We've got a number of very significantly under-funded services it would really help."

That includes the intensive care unit and the maternity unit, where both Mr Davey's children, as well as Mr Clegg's third son Miguel, were born.

Ms Grimes added of the department, which must make an £800,000 cut next year: "Its costs are midwives and doctors. Where do you look to make a saving?"

The hospital boss has previously said she will take the trust into financial deficit before having to make cuts that would impact patient care.

Labour's parliamentary candidate in Kingston and Surbiton, Lee Godfrey, said: "The Liberal Democrats are trying to run away from their record in government, pretending that Tory policies are nothing to do with them.

"Nick Clegg and Ed Davey backed the Tories in taking our NHS backwards.

"Thanks to them it’s harder to see your GP, waiting lists are going up and £3 billion was wasted on a top-down re-organisation of the NHS - that’s money Kingston Hospital could have spent shoring up stretched services."

Surrey Comet:

Kate Grimes shows Edward Davey and Nick Clegg around the hospital 

Mr Davey said this morning that the share of the extra autumn statement cash coming to health services in Kingston will be above the national average.

That will mean another £5.88m in the coffers in 2015/16 for GPs on Kingston's clinical commissioning group.

Surrey Comet:

Mr Clegg was shown around the hospital and chatted to patients, as Kingston MP Edward Davey's election campaign got underway

The group has had to find its own cuts, described last year as "far in excess of what is considered achievable" by clinicians working on the south-west London collaborative commissioning review, the successor to the controversial Better Services, Better Value scheme.