FORMER Wyre Forest MP David Lock has broken his silence over his damning General Election defeat to blame misinformation and poor management of health service changes for his demise.

Mr Lock slammed the conduct and logic of hospital campaigners.

He also blamed Worcestershire Health Authority, hospital consultants and the media for their part in his downfall.

The former junior minister, the only member of the Government to lose, lashed out in an article for business magazine Public Finance.

He saved his utmost wrath for the hospital campaign.

He wrote: "Single issue campaigners are about outcomes, not logic.

"They use experts' reports like a drunk uses a lamp-post - for support not illumination.

"The public debate was almost all about downgrading the A&E department but this was never going to be just about a hospital.

"It was always going to be about the core identity of the area. The widespread view was 'surely we are big enough, important enough, significant enough to have an A&E'.''

Mr Lock, who has repeatedly insisted the problem was not financial but medical, acknowledged in the article the dispute's origin came from the £20 million "financial black hole" in county health finances allied with emerging clinical difficulties.

And he scolded the health authority for not separating the two.

He wrote: "The way the public consultation was originally handled was a textbook case of how not to do it.

"The health authority never separated the financial and clinical arguments and thus when it claimed changes were needed for clinical reasons, the public simply did not believe them."

He claimed hospital consultants, five of whom have broken their silence to publicly back Dr Taylor's campaign, should have told patients of the need for change.

He said: "Some consultants seemed more worried about their own contracts and working conditions than they were about explaining to patients why their own professional bodies supported these types of changes."

About Dr Taylor, who is heading up an all-party group representing constituencies where rural and semi-rural acute general hospitals are under threat, he wrote: "If I were a betting man I would put money on Dr Taylor and his colleagues keeping quiet.

"It's a massive risk for them and my hunch is they'll never expose themselves by putting forward a plan to bring to bring back the A&E, because that would mean addressing the medical issues they have avoided for three years.

"I see them continuing to complain that others have failed to do what people want, knowing all the time that the public's desire is medically undeliverable.

"Is that too cynical a view of this single-issue campaign? Only time will tell."

Dr Taylor said there was "very little" he wished to say in response.

He said: "I could demolish it word by word but I have not got the time or the inclination.

"There is one bit I agree with - the condemnation of the public consultation carried out by the health authority - but that is it.

"He believed he was doing the right thing in representing the wishes of the Government to the people rather than the wishes and needs of his constituents to the Government.

"I say that if changes are necessary but they are the wrong changes for the people - whatever the arguments in favour of them - they are wrong."