North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale has called a proposal to move East Kent accident and emergency services to Canterbury “unnecessarily alarming and dangerous”.

Talks of a potential move for all East Kent services to Canterbury came to light last week when a report to hospital directors suggested a pressing financial and clinical need to replace existing A&E departments with one large hospital.

Speaking after discussions held at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate he called the proposal “a pipe dream that will go up in smoke.”

He said: “Setting aside the geographical and social and medical impracticalities of this proposal there is the small matter of the six hundred million pounds that would be required to build a brand new hospital and which simply is not available. It is a pipe dream that will go up in smoke.”

Mr Gale believes the report is unwelcome and unjustified.

He said: “There has been a long-standing ambition fostered by a small number of medical staff, to see the creation of a single major East Kent teaching hospital as a substitute for Margate, Ashford and Canterbury hospitals.

“While pronouncements from the Royal College of Surgeons may be designed to enhance patient safety, they have unfortunately had the effect of stimulating this ambition and as a result destabilising recruitment to posts in our existing hospitals.

“The unwelcome and unjustified Care Quality Commission report, which I have already raised in person with the chairman of that organisation, led to considerable loss of morale among the eight thousand very dedicated NHS staff working in our local hospitals and the last thing we now need is another period of ill-founded speculation and uncertainty.”

He wants to keep A&E services where they are for the benefit of each community.

He said: “Of course we have to accept that the medical game moves on, that times and demands change and that it is necessary to respond to fresh needs and requirements and to sometimes take difficult decisions in relation to the location and deployment of services.

“But the geography of East Kent has not changed and as we demonstrated so definitively fifteen years ago, we need our three centres supported by our local community hospitals, in which so much money has already been invested, to meet the elective and acute demands of the whole area.

“That requirement coupled with the harsh facts of finances, makes this blue sky proposal both unnecessarily alarming and dangerous.”

Mr Gale has been in talks and stated his view to interim chief executive Chris Bown.

He added: “We need immediately and under his (Bown’s) direction a period of stability and not the uncertainty generated by kite-flying.

“There is a hard job to be done to address the real concerns arising from increasing pressures on hospital and GP services and that will not be made easier by unrealistic speculation whether it emanates from trust directors, medical staff or vested narrow community interests.”