AN MP has criticised hospital bosses for ploughing ahead with proposed cuts and closures despite news of a surplus of cash in the North West NHS.

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, is angry that controversial cuts to acute medical services at Kendal's Westmorland General Hospital have not been reconsidered after it was disclosed that the NHS in the North West had finished the 2006/7 financial year £161 million in credit.

The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, which last September agreed to close WGH to urgent medical admissions such as suspected heart attack patients and stroke victims despite a public outcry, has also benefited financially from changes to NHS accounting.

It will no longer be penalised for falling £6.3 million into the red in 2005/6 - although it still has to recover the shortfall.

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