COUNTY council leaders have denied their decision to offer a £5million loan to the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was politically motivated.

The proposal to offer a loan came under the spotlight at a meeting of Kent County Council’s backbench watchdog committee.

Members of the cross-party scrutiny committee questioned KCC deputy leader Cllr Alex King about the loan, with several expressing misgivings about the way it had been made. But he rejected a suggestion from one of his Conservative colleagues that the loan was a political gesture.

It emerged during the meeting that at the time KCC took its decision to offer £5million, council chiefs did not have a complete picture of the debts of both the hospital trust and the West Kent Primary Care Trust. Both are carrying deficits totalling million pounds.

Cllr King also disclosed that it was likely that if the trust did decide to accept the offer of financial help, secretary of state for health Alan Johnson would have to approve it.

Cllr Roy Bullock, also the Conservative leader of Tunbridge Wells council, said: “What I cannot quite understand is why it should be such a public announcement when it could have been made much softer. Quite frankly, I sense that there is a feeling that this was really a political announcement. It was almost gesture politics, a knee-jerk reaction taken over a limited period of time.”

But Cllr King firmly rejected the claim. “This was not a political decision. It is an issue of public confidence. We have an obligation to help put things right. There is a practical purpose and a psychological purpose. These are the closest hospitals to many people and there is a psychological importance in demonstrating that it is not just the NHS that is trying to put things right.”

Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Trudy Dean questioned why a loan was needed when the Healthcare Commission’s report had made no reference to a lack of money being an issue in its findings into the C-Difficile outbreaks.

“Do we have any evidence that lack of money is likely to be a problem in the future?” she said.

In reply, Cllr King said restoring public confidence was the key issue.