COMPLAINTS the public consultation on the proposed reorganisation of hospital care in south east London is flawed have been rejected by the man overseeing the process.

Michael Chuter, chairman of the joint committee of primary care trusts, which has put together the A Picture of Health consultation document, has refused Bexley Council's request to withdraw it.

But in a concession to the complaint, the committee is now publishing an "easy to read" version on its website and taking out further press advertising to explain the options.

Bexley claimed the document was confusing and difficult to understand and the questions people were asked to respond to were "bland and non-specific".

The council also pointed out people in Bexley were being given no real choices as all the options downgraded Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, to a non-acute, borough hospital.

Mr Chuter has now replied to Bexley Council leader Councillor Ian Clement, saying the committee had made "strenuous efforts to ensure both its completeness and its readability".

He said it had also consulted Imperial College's centre for health management "with the aim of ensuring the questions were unbiased and easy to understand".

Mr Chuter said the options for the future of Queen Mary's had been distilled from 23 possible alternatives which, when judged against specific criteria, had discounted any possibility of the Sidcup hospital becoming one of the specialist acute centres.

He added more than 3,000 replies had already been received from people in Bexley, which led him to believe residents had not been too confused to respond.

Meanwhile, Old Bexley and Sidcup MP Derek Conway has been asking a series of questions in the House of Commons designed to tease out information about the comparative performances of the four hospitals involved - Queen Mary's, Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, Lewisham Hospital and Bromley's Princess Royal University.

Mr Conway claims the Government has a secret report containing the information, which it refuses to make public.

He said: "This means we have to try to get the information through selective questions."