DISGRUNTLED campaigners who still believe disgraced surgeon Richard Neale should have been prosecuted are to meet senior police officers.

Patients say it may be the last opportunity for North Yorkshire Police to stave off an official complaint about the two-year investigation which came to nothing.

In a separate development Health Minister John Hutton has turned down a request from former Tory leader William Hague that the forthcoming independent inquiry into the Neale scandal should be opened up to private as well as NHS patients.

Mr Hutton has reiterated that the inquiry's purpose is to consider the way that the NHS handled complaints about Mr Neale.

"This does not, of course, include the care or treatment of patients in the private sector," said Mr Hutton, in a letter to the Northallerton MP.

Graham Maloney, advisor to the group formed by victims of Mr Neale, said the ruling was "totally unacceptable" as the group included private and NHS patients.

It could mean that the group's co-founder, Sheila Wright-Hogeland, from Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, would be barred from giving evidence.

"We will pursue this matter with the chairman of the inquiry," he said.

The group, which represents more than 200 former patients of Mr Neale, is still angry that the police probe came to nothing.

Most of all they cannot understand why investigating officers only looked at eight out of hundreds of cases.

The former Friarage Hospital surgeon was struck off for botching operations and dishonesty in July 2000. He had already been struck off in Canada.

Mr Maloney and Mrs Wright-Hogeland are due to attend a two-hour meeting with North Yorkshire police's Deputy Chief Constable Peter Walker, on October 14.

The investigation was called off last October after the Crown Prosecution Service decided that there was no realistic prospect of criminal conviction.