GOVERNMENT failure to tackle the care home crisis is leading to 1,000 pensioners suffering an early death every year, a North Yorkshire MP claimed today.

Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh accused ministers of burying their heads in the sand while old folk's homes across the country were forced to close.

These include dozens of care homes in York and North Yorkshire, where there have been problems of "bed blocking" due to old people having to stay in hospital because they have nowhere else to go.

Earlier this week, the Evening Press revealed that Laurens Manor, in Lawrence Street, York, was to close on December 18 - with residents facing an uncertain future.

Tory MP Ms McIntosh blamed many of the closures on the Government's "over-prescriptive, expensive and bureaucratic regulations".

According to independent healthcare analysts Laing and Buisson, the care home sector has lost more than 70,000 long-term care places since 1997 and 13,400 elderly care places in the 15 months to April this year.

At the current rate of care home closures, 10,000 people are being forced out of their old folk's homes every year and have to look for a place elsewhere.

Ms McIntosh said the Government's own research indicated one in every ten old people uprooted from their home would suffer a premature death.

She said: "If the Government's 1997 estimate of the associate death rate is correct, it means that as many as 1,000 people may die annually as a direct result of home closures."

The MP said that - if homes continued to shut at the current rate - demand for care home places would outstrip supply by 2005.

"The Government should now take meaningful action to significantly reduce the current rate of care home closures and combat the decline in the availability of domiciliary care - rather than simply and disingenuously disregard the current crisis," she said.

Ms McIntosh made the demand in a Westminster Early Day Motion.

She was backed by 18 Conservative colleagues.

Updated: 11:19 Friday, November 28, 2003