LONDON (AFP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party is fast losing ground to Britain's main opposition Conservatives, especially on key issues such as health, education and the environment, two polls found on Wednesday.

Overall support for the Conservatives rose to 38 percent, up four points from a month ago and their best rating for 13 years, matched only during a fuel crisis in 2000, according to a poll by ICM for The Guardian newspaper.

The governing Labour Party's approval rating also improved -- up two percentage points thanks to a slump in support for the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats -- but it was still behind the Tories at 34 percent.

The Liberal Democrats lost four points to 20 percent.

The shift from Labour to the Conservatives follows a raft of problems at the Home Office and the National Health Service along with a successful revamp of the largest opposition party under its new, youthful leader, David Cameron.

Women, who had been most likely to vote Labour in the past three general elections, are switching to Conservative policies on health, education and the economy, the survey found.

Blair is desperate to win back public confidence after a series of scandals rocked his party in recent weeks, leading to a poor showing in local elections at the start of the month followed by a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle.

But these troubles have increased pressure on the prime minister himself, who is serving a record third consecutive term in office, to hand over power to his presumed successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Certain Labour MPs believe a change at the top would give the party a much needed shot of energy.

The Guardian poll, however, found that support for the Conservatives would rise to 40 percent over Labour on 31 percent if Brown were in charge.

The newspaper said the results indicated that the next general election, which must be held by 2010, may well produce a hung Parliament.

Piling pressure on Blair and the rest of his party, a separate online poll by Sky News found that 36 percent of voters backed the Conservatives on the environment, compared with 16.1 percent for the Liberal Democrats and just 15.9 percent for Labour.

ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults by telephone between May 19 and 21 with results weighted to reflect the population.