Horton Hospital scheme prompts fears

11:24pm Wednesday 30th May 2007

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An MP fears doctors are being "brainwashed" over plans to downgrade children's and maternity treatment at Banbury's Horton Hospital.

Banbury MP Tony Baldry warned that proposals for the hospital, due to be unveiled in July, could be little different to those previously branded 'unsafe and inhumane' by GPs during last year's public consultation on cutbacks to services.

Mr Baldry is concerned that the rethink by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust, which runs the Horton, is nothing more than attempt to change the minds of GPs - without changing the proposals.

The 2006 consultation on the trust's attempt to end 24-hour children's services, reduce maternity and obstetric treatment, and close the special care baby unit at the Horton, ended with GPs savaging the plans. Other groups, including Cherwell District Council, the Save the Horton Action Group, the Public and Patient Forum, and Oxfordshire County Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, all criticised the cutbacks.

The trust said it would look again at the proposals, and two working parties were set up.

But it has refused to name the members of the working parties, fuelling concerns that the groups were hand-picked by the trust to carry out its wishes.

This week, Mr Baldry voiced new worries.

He said: "I have the very clear impression that the intention of the working parties is to wear down GPs, using outside academic and professional pressure, so that the trust can then say 'you won't like these changes but we have the support of professionals, including local GPs'."

Trust spokesman Helen Peggs said: "The clinical working groups are made up of doctors, nurses, midwives and GPs from Banbury and Oxford.

"The majority of the clinicians are from north Oxfordshire, and the GPs selected their own representatives," she added.

"I believe that the working group reports, and the names of those involved, will be made public at some point soon when all has been finalised and agreed."