By Jack Dobermann SEVERAL TOP London hospitals, including three teaching hospitals previously thought to have a seand possible closure as a result of the government's secret 'Specialty Reviews".
document hy Bob Nicholls, the govemment ap pointed Executive Director of the London Implementation Group has been leaked to pres sure group London Health Emergency.
Drafted at the end of May, it spells out the issues at stake for troversial rationalisation package.
As warned by LHE, the cuts and closures reach far beyond central London. Closures are suggested as far afield as Colchester and East Grinstead. In adalton to ine cuts already revealed affecting Bart's (which is to be stripped of all six of its regional specialties) and Harefield hospitals, the new hit list singled out by Mr Nicholls includes:
• KINGS COLLEGE, The ROYAL FREE and ST MARY'S hospitals, "which could see a significant with drawal of specialist services as stand to lose three key specialties, bringing "difficulties of maintaining morale and retaining the high quality staff needed • The MAUDSLEY Hospital, one of the country's top psychiatric centres, whose future viability is threatened by the withdrawal of a proposa To gional neuroscience centre.
• The BROOK Hospital in Greenwich, which will lose cararac and neuroscience specialy services, (Trust chiefs are also planning to close its trauma services).
• OLDCHURCH Hospital. Romford, to be stripped of its neuroscience services as well as the previously leaked plans to axe its cancer specialty: Trust chiefs are also secking to close Oldchurch's busy casualty unit.
• ST HELIER Hospital could lose its renal services to St George's: Mr Nicholls wars sisted by the Trust".
• QUEEN MARY'S Hospical, Rochampion: stripped of its regional plastic surgery specialty, Mr Nicholls wars that the hospital would become "largely an outpatients/day surgery facility with little in-patient activity."
some or die proposals from the specialty reviews appear to run counter to previous docisions for hospital closures, leavPrime Minister's residence a suitcase containing a cash amount of 6.7 million Rupees. This suitcase was brought into handed over to the Prime Minister himselt. He goes on to claim that a further 3.3 million Rupees was delivered to one of Ne Rao's assistants the following day, topping up the pay. ment to a nice round 10 million Rupees ($210,000). Hunt the taxes MICHAEL HUNT, managing director of Nissan UK. swindled the Inland Revenue out of £197 million over a 17-year period, according to Peter Rook QC. summing up for the serious Fraud Office at Southwark Crown Court last week.
The alleged swindle involved siphoning off £219 million from the company's profits, covering the tracks with false documentation, including sham shipping agents in Holland and Norway, and then laundering the money through Geneva bank accounts.
The prime mover behind the scam, according to Mr head of Nissan UK. Botnar was at one time a billionaire, rated as the ninth-richest pering profound uncertainty over the future of Charing Cross Hospital, the Royal Marsden, The Royal Brompton, Guy's and St Thomas's.
However none of the proposals from the Specialty Reviews have been costed.
No funding has been identified for the huge capital costs required for the transfer of existing units across sites, sometimes many miles apart.
There is also the danger that sures on London hospitals and their loss of other contract income as a result of the NHS internal market, the withdrawal of specialist services could easily trigger a serious financial Conse some clas Tory ministers and their growing army of managers and secretive quangos now cutting away at London's NHS are counting on public apathy to allow their proposals through.
Health workers and local communities must link up now in a united campaign, showing that that Londoners will fight back for properly-funded, ac-