A NEW replacement for Inverclyde Royal has been suggested by Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard as he joins a campaign to protect hospital services.

Mr Leonard made a visit to Greenock to back local party activists in their fight against health board cuts.

The Tele recently revealed how breast cancer services are in the firing line after a leaked NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde report recommended moving assessment, treatment and diagnosis to a 'one-stop-shop at Paisley's Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Mr Leonard says he accepts that the board is struggling financially with a repair backlog of around £23m alone on top of an estimated £90m funding gap across the GGC area.

He says the only way out of the cash crisis is an end to austerity and more support for the NHS - including the possibility of a replacement for IRH.

Mr Leonard said: "I'm aware that there is a big deficit in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board budget and one of the concerns that's been expressed to me by local people is that might threaten the very future of this hospital and the services in it.

"But this is a hugely important asset for this community.

"I represent central Scotland and the Monklands Hospital in Lanarkshire is now forty years old and coming up for replacement.

"It was opened in the mid-1970s by Jim Callaghan, the then-Labour prime minister, and this hospital here is just a couple of years younger than that, so it seems to me that its coming up to a point where its future will be reviewed.

"I would certainly like to see consideration given to an increase in investment in this site, including the consideration of a replacement hospital.

"There is a growing mood among people that this decade of austerity has not paid off."

Mr Leonard was speaking as he lent his support to the Greenock & Inverclyde Labour group's 'Save Our Services' campaign.

The area's MSP, the SNP's Stuart McMillan, has played down fears over cuts at the IRH, insisting there are 'no plans to close or move' the breast cancer unit, while the health board says any changes are designed to improve the level of care for patients and that no final decisions have been made.

Martin McCluskey, Labour's general election candidate for Inverclyde, said: "I'm going to go with what's in black and white and what's been put to the acute services committee of the health board, which is a proposal to close the service here and move it all to Paisley.

"We really want certainty from them that the services we have now are going to stay, that we're not going to see the hospital facing death by a thousand cuts when more services are removed."