DISGRACED gynaecologist Richard Neale may have caused the deaths of up to 70 patients, the High Court was told.

Richard Lissack QC, representing former patients who are pressing for a public inquiry into the Neale scandal, said the number of "wholly unnecessary" deaths had been "put as high as 70, perhaps more".

The High Court was hearing a challenge to Health Secretary Alan Milburn's decision to hold an inquiry behind closed doors into the way the NHS handled complaints against Mr Neale.

The surgeon, of Langthorpe, near Boroughbridge, worked at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, for a decade until 1995, despite having been struck off in Canada.

He was struck off in Britain in 2000 for bungling a series of operations in North Yorkshire.

The High Court case has been brought jointly by former Neale patient Sheila Wright-Hogeland, from near Kirkbymoorside, and Patricia Howard, from Kent, who wants a similar inquiry into former Kent GP Clifford Ayling to be held in public as well. Dr Ayling indecently assaulted women patients.

More than a hundred women - many of them also victims - and other supporters filled Court 3 at London's Law Courts for the hearing, which is expected to continue for most of the week.

Lawyers for the patients argued that the restrictions were "irrational'' and contravened the patients' rights under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights to "freedom of expression'' and to impart and receive accurate information at the inquiry.

Richard Lissack QC, for Mrs Wright-Hogeland, 50, and the 250 other victims she is representing in the Neale case, told the court they had suffered "the cruellest form of clinical abuse".

It was recognised by everyone, including those speaking on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair, as "truly a scandal".

In both cases, the victims claim that the public has "a right to know'' what occurred to them and the inquiries must be fully open to the public gaze.

Mr Justice Scott Baker heard how former Tory leader William Hague was among those who demanded a

public inquiry into the "uniquely chilling" case of the disgraced gynaecologist.

Mr Lissack described how Mr Hague had given MPs a horrific insight into the abuse suffered by patients at the Friarage Hospital, including the case of a woman left incontinent and crippled after being "ripped apart" in a routine operation.

He told the court: "The suffering that has been endured leaps from the pages in the schedule of a sample 88 cases."

The hearing was continuing today.

Updated: 11:39 Wednesday, February 06, 2002