A BOLTON eye surgeon has launched a scathing attack on Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt over plans to privatise cataract operations.

Dr Simon Kelly, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the Royal Bolton Hospital claims NHS led schemes, not private projects as claimed by Mrs Hewitt, are the reason waiting times for cataract surgery have been slashed.

He said: "It is not the independent sector-treatment centres that have delivered services to English cataract patients, it is National Health Service ophthalmic staff."

Dr Kelly, a leader in his field, says the Action on Cataracts programme, which is used at the Royal Bolton Hospital and is an NHS scheme run with the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, had increased the number of cataract operations from 170,000 in 1998/1999 to more than 300,000 by 2003/2004.

In a letter to the medical journal, The Lancet, he said the private corporation, Netcare, which has been awarded the governments mobile cataract scheme, would have to be paid for more than 44,000 cataract operations, whether or not they are carried out.

Waiting lists for eye surgery at the Royal Bolton Hospital are some of the lowest in the country and the department is the only one of its kind in the country to be awarded the national Charter Mark award for services three times.