FEARS that local doctors are being brainwashed over plans to downgrade children's and maternity treatment at Banbury's Horton Hospital have been raised by town MP Tony Baldry.

The MP has also warned that revised proposals for the Horton, due to be unveiled in July, could be little different to those branded "unsafe and inhumane" by GPs during last year's public consultation on cutbacks to services.

Mr Baldry is concerned that the rethink by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust, which controls the Horton, is nothing more than an attempt to change the minds of the GPs - without changing the proposals.

The 2006 consultation on the trust's attempt to end 24-hour children's services, reduce maternity and obstetric treatment and close the special care baby unit at the Horton, ended with GPs savaging the plans. Other groups, including Cherwell District Council, the Save the Horton Action Group, Public and Patient Forum, and Oxfordshire County Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, also all criticising the cutbacks.

The trust said it would look again at the proposals and two working parties were set up to examine the issues.

But the trust has refused to name the members of the working parties, fuelling concerns that the groups were hand-picked by the trust to carry out its wishes.

This week, Mr Baldry voiced new worries.

He said: "Last year, every GP in the Horton catchment area signed a response describing the trust's proposals as 'unsafe and inhumane'.

"The trust took the proposals off the table and set up the working parties, one for maternity services, the other for children's services, with a couple of GPs on each."

He said: "The feedback I am getting is that there will few significant changes to the original proposals.

"I have the impression that the intention of the working parties is to wear down GPs, using outside academic and professional pressure, so that the trust can then say 'you won't like these changes but we have the support of professionals, including local GPs.'"

Mr Baldry went on: "I hope the GPs who signed the response to the last consultation, will be briefed as to the extent, if any, of the changes made by the trust, and I hope each GP will be asked individually if they now consider the trust's proposals to be safe."

Helen Peggs, spokeswoman for the trust, said: "The working groups have been discussing the relevant services, looking at the evidence as to whether or not there is a case for change.

"The working groups have heard from independent experts, but it was the working groups who invited them in.

"I believe that the working group reports, and the names of those involved, will be made public at some point soon when all has been finalised and agreed."