LABOUR leadership contender Andy Burnham made the feared threat to Liverpool’s health services one of the centrepieces of the launch of the party’s “Defend Our NHS” campaign.

The Liverpool-born former Health Secretary said the news of 300 job losses at Aintree Hospital NHS Trust and redundancies looming over the city’s Primary Care Trust (PCT) workers forewarned of a Tory plot to “unpick the fabric of the NHS”.

He also hit out at the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition plans to spend £3bn on the reorganisation of the NHS.

Speaking after the final party leadership hustings in Manchester, Mr Burnham, MP for Leigh, said he recognised he was the “underdog” but he would he fight to the end.

He said: “What is happening at Aintree makes me very sad because I went there as Health Secretary to look at their apprenticeship scheme.

“In my view, the hospital has always been a great employer and worked hard to give jobs to people in the community, but now is having to make choices.

“I am told all members of Liverpool PCT are under 90-day consultation on redundancy. The Government is dismantling it now and there is no justification for spending money on a reorganisation when the NHS should be putting every penny it has into patient care.”