Animal rights protester Barry Horne is today back in York District Hospital after ending his latest hunger strike.

FLASHBACK: Evening Press front page from April last year

Horne, serving an 18-year sentence at Full Sutton Prison, near Stamford Bridge, for arson, is "very ill" in a side room off a medical ward after being taken to the hospital by ambulance last night.

Hospital general manager Colin Watts said today that Horne had withdrawn a Final Directive, also known as a Living Will, forbidding medical intervention.

His admission on a stretcher followed discussions between the prison and consultants who had treated Horne on previous occasions.

It is the third time Horne has been admitted to the hospital following hunger strikes. The previous two occasions were in late 1998 and in April last year.

Mr Watts said today he was very ill and weak. With three prison officers at his bedside, he was now receiving fluids orally.

"He is conscious and able to receive visitors but has not done so as yet," he said.

Mr Watts said Horne's was just one of 40-50 emergency admissions yesterday and last night, which were mostly cases of elderly people with flu and chest infections.

He said a couple of diagnostic procedures had been cancelled today, but this was purely because of the volume of admissions. "One admission does not make any difference one way or the other."

He stressed that it was not the hospital's job to decide who it should treat and should not.

But Ryedale MP John Greenway said Horne had once again had to take priority over other patients with "genuine" illnesses.

"The whole thing is insufferable," he said. "This is his personal indulgence, but when other people have genuine illnesses they would prefer not to have, he has to take priority.

"People will again be extremely angry. I wish his associates would persuade him to stop this."

However, Robin Webb, press officer for the Animals Liberation Front, said: "If MPs and the Government had kept their pre-election pledge for a Royal Commission on vivisection, this would never have happened."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.