GOVERNMENT health bosses are being urged to ditch the multi-million pound debt inherited by the county's NHS trust.

Liberal Democrat leaders from City of York Council are putting forward a motion at their full meeting next week asking Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to write off debts to the tune of £37 million.

Councillors say that is the amount of deficit North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) inherited when it came into being in October last year.

Coun Madeleine Kirk, who is proposing the motion, said: "The need to repay this historic debt very quickly is prompting serious short-term measures.

"It is madness to set up a new organisation with a huge deficit, which it did not create, but which will seriously limit its ability to care for residents in the future.

"The Liberal Democrats in York are calling upon the Secretary of State to respond to the cash crisis in our region and allow the new North Yorkshire and York PCT to focus on achieving in-year balance in a careful and considered way."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "We have no plans to write off historic debt. We're confident that the NHS has now turned the corner and will be back in balance by the end of this financial year - and we expect it to deliver a £250 million surplus by the end of 2008.

"For those organisations with the biggest problems we continue to work with strategic health authorities, for instance by sending in turnaround teams. We are helping organisations address their problems of poor financial management so they can return to good financial health."

The PCT, which is heading for a debt of £45 million this year, has introduced a range of service cut backs in an attempt to save money.

They include the suspension for three months of a wide range of hospital procedures such as pain-relieving joint injections.

Yesterday, The Press, pictured, reported how doctors had now been issued with more details about the measures - which they said could leave patients in severe pain and even be life-threatening.

One of the most controversial proposals was the decision to suspend for three months a GP's direct access to scans include MRI and CT scans - which can detect cancers.

Patients must now go through a special PCT panel to be granted approval for the scans instead of being sent straight to hospital by their GP.

The PCT has said it is not introducing any measures which affect emergency or urgent care, such as cancer.

GPs fear being sued for denying treatment

THE bitter row over multi-million pound health cuts deepened further today after a leading doctors' group said medics denying treatment to patients could be sued.

North Yorkshire's Local Medical Committee (LMC) which represents the county's GPs, has written to North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) expressing anger at its latest round of service cuts.

As reported in The Press yesterday, the PCT has issued new instructions to GPs on cuts to local health services as part of a package to save £10 million by the end of March.

But doctors said the latest cuts went even further than previous ones and could even be life-threatening.

Central to the PCT's proposals is the introduction of a "prior approval" panel which will deal with patients suffering from a range of conditions who have been referred to hospital by their GP.

GPs have strongly objected to the panel, which will also decide on whether patients who have been referred for diagnostic procedures such as CT scans should be seen.

LMC secretary Dr John Givans said in his letter to the PCT: "We consider that any registered practitioner participating in the Prior Approval Process may be at serious risk of litigation and/or disciplinary action and should be warned of those risks."

Speaking to The Press, he said: "If the panel says a patient is not eligible to see a specialist, and something goes wrong with that patient, the patient or their relatives would be very likely to take litigation against the doctors who decided the patient didn't need treatment."

The letter told the PCT's performance and delivery boss Bill Redlin that its latest proposals would "compromise patient care even more".

"The correspondence demonstrates a total failure on the part of North Yorkshire and York PCT to understand the concepts of doctors' clinical responsibility and the needs of patients in North Yorkshire and the City of York," wrote Dr Givans.

"GPs cannot continue to give high quality care to their patients if required to conform with the bureaucratic nonsense required by the PCT: neither can GPs take over any part of secondary care without additional resources."

A PCT spokesman said: "The PCT is fully aware of its clinical responsibility and accepts the clinical responsibility for the actions being taken."

Dialogue with GPs and hospital was still ongoing, he said.

A public board meeting had also made it clear there was no outright ban on any medical procedure if it was clinically necessary.

York MP Hugh Bayley said: "If doctors are worried, I'm worried. I've asked to meet the York and Selby GPs to hear their objections to the PCT's plans. The PCT and doctors need to work together to protect essential patient care."