DAVID Lock has attacked the conduct and lack of "logic" of "shouting and screaming" hospital campaigners who helped to unseat him as the MP for Wyre Forest.

The former Junior Minister also criticised doctors for failing to voice the medical opinion that it was unsafe for A&E at Kiddermister Hospital to remain open.

He said he did not believe the man who ousted him at the General Election - Dr Richard Taylor - would try to restore the service.

In an article for Public Finance magazine, he wrote: "If I were a betting man (which I am not) I would put money on Richard 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 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 unbelievable."

However, his strongest words were reserved for the protesters who campaigned against the downgrading of the hospital - saying they ignored experts' advice.

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

"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 an area.

"The widespread view was 'surely we are big enough, important enough, significant enough to have an A&E'."

He added: "The depth of moral righteousness of the campaigners only contrasts with the extent to which they were out of tune with medical thinking."

"Whether I was pushing my children on a swing in the park, shopping or walking through town on an evening off, there was always a chance people would come up close to make the point loudly and forcibly that 'people would die' if the A&E were taken away," Mr Lock wrote.

"I recall 400 of them shouting and screaming in the central lobby of the House of Commons, conduct responsible people would not have dreamed of in any other circumstances.

"However, the collective sense of being wronged discharged campaigners from any duty to behave in a civilised manner to anyone they felt was responsible for this atrocity."

Doctors came under attack for not trying to explain why "changes were needed."

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."