Keir Starmer has denied he is hostile to those who pay for private healthcare after he said he would never make that choice.
The Labour leader said he “completely understand why people would go private”.
His comments come a week after he was challenged on the issue in the first televised election leaders debate.
He and the prime minister were asked if a loved one was “on a long waiting list for surgery, would you, if you felt that that was the only way forward, use private healthcare?”
Rishi Sunak answered “yes”, but Sir Keir said “no”.
Appearing on a BBC Panorama special Sir Keir denied he was opposed to others making that decision.
He said: “I’m not hostile in the slightest. I completely understand why people would go private.”
He said he knew people who had made the choice because they wanted to have an operation more quickly, including so they could swiftly get back to work.
But, he added: “I think I was asked, or at least one version of the question was, would you go private to, as it were, skip the waiting list to get an operation done, to which I said, no, that wouldn’t be my instinct.
“I damaged my knee playing football a few years ago, my meniscus was torn, I had a scan, I waited my turn, I went to the NHS, got it fixed and I was back playing football, that’s what happened.”
He went on: “On acute care, because then the version of the question is well what about an emergency? Acute care? The NHS is the single best place if you’ve got an acute problem and that is why even in private hospitals, they refer in to the NHS for acute care. If I had an acute care, life threatening issue for me or my family, the very best place to be is in the NHS.”
Asked if he was prepared to make enemies in order to drive economic growth, by overriding objections to new developments. Sir Keir replied: “Yes – we’re going to have to be tough.
“We’re going to have to change the way things are done.”
Earlier this week Nigel Farage pulled out of a similar interview as his Reform UK party faced a row over whether the UK should have appeased Hitler.
The former Ukip leader has also been due to take part in a Panorama special with Mr Robinson, set to have been broadcast on Tuesday night.
But it was pulled from the schedule and postponed.
The surprise move came less than 24 hours after it emerged one of his candidates claimed the country would have been “far better” off if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis.
Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle on the south coast, also described Winston Churchill as “abysmal” and praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to the BBC.