DAVID Cameron has accused Labour of targeting community hospitals in Tory areas for closure.

The Tory leader and Witney MP, yesterday said the Government was more interested in politics than patients.

His comments came after a nationwide analysis showed Conservative or Liberal Democrat constituencies were bearing the brunt of closure threats.

A report carried out by the Community Hospitals Association revealed there are 62 closed or at-risk hospitals in Conservative constituencies, eight in Liberal Democrat seats and 11 in Labour areas.

Of the ten community hospitals closed this year, five fall in Conservative-held seats and four are in Lib Dem areas.

In Oxfordshire there are six hospitals under threat of closure or loss of services.

Five of them - Townlands, Bicester, Wallingford, Wantage and Didcot - are in Conservative constituencies. The sixth, Abingdon, falls within Lib Dem MP Evan Harris's constituency.

Another hospital whose future is under review, Chipping Norton, is also in a Conservative constituency.

Mr Cameron said: "Across the country there are cuts to frontline services that may have been influenced by ministers more interested in political rather than patient outcomes.

"No wonder Labour have lost the public's confidence in their ability to run our NHS."

Earlier this month at his party's annual conference in Bournemouth, his first as party leader, Mr Cameron said his national campaign to defend health services from Government "cuts" had been prompted by threats to services in his own county.

He said: "What I've seen in Oxfordshire has definitely helped inspire me to make this into a big national campaign."

"We have got that terrible combination of big deficits and real service reduction.

"People are not just disappointed but they are perplexed, after all the money that has gone into the health service, that there are such huge programmes of closures and redundancies and cutbacks."

The Department of Health has insisted that Government ministers do not have the ability to choose directly which hospitals close or stay open.