TWO North-East towns feature on a Tory list of hospitals allegedly facing severe service cuts.

The University Hospital of Hartlepool and Scarborough Hospital are on a list of 29 hospitals said by Conservative leader David Cameron to be at risk of losing key services such as accident and emergency and consultant-led maternity units.

The move to highlight alleged weaknesses in the NHS is part of the Tory leaders campaign to regain the political initiative against Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Mr Cameron has also asked the Government to clarify whether district general hospitals with a full range of services have a future.

Hartlepool hospital is due to have its accident and emergency and consultant-led maternity units downgraded because of plans to reorganise health services north of the Tees.

In the short-term, patients are expected to make greater use of the University Hospital of North Tees, in Stockton.

Within the next decade, both hospitals are to be demolished and replaced with a new hospital.

Scarborough Hospital bosses recently warned that unless serious inroads are made into a £7.2m debt, services may be moved to other hospitals. A bid to slash spending by shedding up to 600 jobs at the hospital was recently announced.

The Department of Health said: "The NHS is looking at the safest and most effective way of delivering care. This does not mean wholesale closures of district general hospitals, but it does mean NHS clinicians and managers need to work with communities to decide on the best organisation of services."

The Scarborough hospital wants to centralise all births at the Scarborough maternity unit on safety grounds.

Currently, women can opt to have their babies at midwife-led units at Malton and Whitby.

Iain McInnes, chief executive of the Scarborough trust said: "We are taking action now to protect the long-term future of local health services, and are committed to providing a full 24-hour A&E department with all the necessary support services.

"By centralising births on the Scarborough site, we believe we will be providing a safer and more popular service for women, while ante-natal and post-natal services will continue to be delivered locally."