A 77-year-old from the Liverpool region took Ed Miliband to task over revelations that a German company is in talks to talks to take over NHS hospitals.
Pensioner Margaret Pritchard is campaigning to secure the future of Merseyside's Whiston Hospital in the NHS and is fearful it may fall into the hands of the German firm Helios.
In a Question and Answer session at the Labour Conference in Liverpool Margaret put Mr Miliband on the spot and said: "The Germans are sniffing round our hospital!
"Tell me that you will not let the Germans do to the NHS what they have done to manufacturing."
Mr Miliband assured her that he was passionately opposed to privatisation in the NHS but he refused to be drawn on the "German Question" and moved swiftly on.
The Labour leader held a Q&A session with the public at the Labour conference and
two thousand attended
It was the first time a party had opened its conference to outsiders and despite asking for "tough questions" Mr Miliband got a smooth ride.
Perhaps because there were many Labour Party members in the hall, and despite his demands that the guests should get to pose questions... the party members were called-on to speak about 50% of the time.
He spoke for more than an hour and won a lot of friends among the newcomers, but the audience left wondering whether he was going to DO anything as a result of his listening exercise.
One man said: "It is just a charm offensive - to show that he can ad-lib just as well as David Cameron. But will any of this change his way of thinking one iota? I doubt it!".
Adam Flanders, NHS around 7 months, 3 weeks ago