MID-Worcestershire MP Peter Luff has put the proposed closure of the Macmillan cancer unit beds at Evesham Community Hospital at the top of his campaigning agenda against health cuts.

South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust Board members agreed last Wednesday to a raft of measures - including the loss of the palliative care beds - in a bid to make up a £13m funding shortfall.

The county council's health overview and scrutiny committee are due to decide whether the proposals need to go out to public consultation on Friday, and in a letter to chairman Coun Simon Geraghty, Mr Luff says they must.

He said: "We need more palliative beds in the whole county, not fewer. The five beds at Evesham should probably be 20. Zero is not an option.

"The people who have given generously to support the Macmillan beds will be outraged to see them just cut as part of a short-term financial crisis.

"What is more, I understand the cut is being made to enable the PCT to finance beds at the new St Richard's Hospice in Worcester - beds to which it was already committed.

"All of us who have given our time and money to support this much needed facility thought we would be expanding cancer care in Worcestershire, but are instead being told that by supporting St Richard's we have signed the death warrant for the palliative care beds at Evesham.

"This cruel irony cannot go unchallenged."

He also highlights three other reasons for a full public consultation on these cuts.

"First, at a time when records sums of money are being poured into the NHS, we should not have to make cuts at all in services that local people value," he said.

"Second, even the smaller and apparently less consequential cuts, for example in physiotherapy, come after earlier cuts in previous years, while others, like those to health visiting, will have the most damaging impact, especially on the elderly.

"Third, temporary closures such as those proposed for the Day Rehabilitation Unit and Bredon Ward at Evesham, have a habit of becoming permanent with no new facilities ever emerging."

The health overview and scriutiny committee is to meet at 10am at County Hall on Friday.