VALE MP Peter Luff has described the £13 million reduction in the South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust budget for the financial year as "devastating".

The loss of five per cent of its expected revenue would mean damaging cuts to local services, he warned.

As the PCT met in Pershore to discuss its response to the latest government measures, Mr Luff said: "Ministers are panicking about overspending and debts growing at a number of hospitals and other health trusts.

"Their response has been to 'top-slice' about £13 million from the NHS budget in South Worcestershire for the bizarrely complicated NHS bank - a bank invented on the back of an envelope in a desperate attempt to solve problems created by ministers.

"An endless stream of initiatives and targets from ministers and a massive increase in wage bills - as well as the high costs of PFI hospitals like the one in Worcester - means the NHS just isn't as much better as it ought to be for the huge sums of our money that have been poured into it.

"So it is that instead of developing new services locally, we are looking at the serious possibility of job cuts. And as for new services - forget it."

Mr Luff's comments came on the same day he wrote to health minister Rosie Winterton about the delay in implementing the national colorectal screening programme to detect bowel cancer in the most vulnerable age group.

The MP, who lost his mother and brother to the disease, wrote: "How long will Worcestershire people have to wait for this vital preventative health programme? Given the current financial crisis, I bet it's a very, very long time."