The lawyer for Hatton Garden heist ringleader Brian Reader has questioned whether he should be escorted by armed police in hospital.

A video broadcast by Sky News shows the 76-year-old Dartford pensioner being wheeled through a hospital corridor on a bed, accompanied by nurses and three armed guards.

The "guv'nor" of the jewellery raid is thought to have been transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital for cancer treatment, from Belmarsh Prison in Woolwich where he was awaiting sentence.

Solicitor Hesham Puri told the broadcaster: ""We accept there needs to be some security in place but does it really need to be armed officers escorting him back and forward from scans and seeing the doctors?"

The solicitor has reportedly called for security to be reduced, but has not received a response; although the Prisons Service said that security measures for Reader were "appropriate" at the time of his admission.

Reader faces a maximum 10-year spell behind bars for his role in the multi-million pound jewellery heist - described as Britain’s largest burglary in legal history - although he is entitled to a reduction on account of his guilty plea.

In January The Sun published a picture of Reader leaving a hospital after cancer treatment and other news sources have reported he is in intensive care unit (ICU) at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in a critical condition.

The pensioner has been threatened with being stripped of his assets, including his luxurious £1million home in Dartford Road.

He headed a gang of men responsible for stealing a haul worth at least £14 million of jewels, gold and cash from London’s famous jewellery quarter and the centre of the UK diamond trade.

Posing as gas repairmen, the gang gained access to the building before boring a hole through a thick concrete wall and breaking into a vault over the Easter weekend last year.

Only around a third of the haul has been recovered after the gang ransacked 73 safety deposit boxes.

Reader pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle with intent to steal ahead of a two-month trial at Woolwich Crown Court of several of his accomplices.

He is due to be sentenced next week.